THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



129 



ables, ' ' cauliflowers, brussels sprouts, carrots, 

 onions, leeks, parsnips, lettuces, and in fact 

 every sort of English vegetables. The pine 

 apples and melons grow outside — no glass 

 houses here — the water melon is the most 

 delicious fruit of all. We have just had one 

 to-day thirty six inches in girth and sixteen 

 inches long, the skin is of a dark green 

 colour, the flesh a beautiful rose pink, they 

 taste slightly sweet and contain about ninety j 

 per cent of water ; our children are passion- 

 ately fond of them. You may remember 

 that Dr. Tanner of fasting notoriety, when 

 he completed his forty days fast, ate a water 

 melon, and I admire his taste, for they are 

 both meat and drink. ' 



No one can deny that the temperature of 

 Queensland is hot, but the heat is not at all 

 oppressive, except just preceding an extra 

 severe thunderstorm, when the therometer 

 sometimes gets up to 130 or 140, but that 

 only lasts for an hour or two, at most. The 

 mean temperature for December in shade 

 was 72°2, the highest reading was 98^, in 

 January the highest was 117°, the lowest 69°. 

 The wildest imagination cannot conceive 

 anything to come up to an Australian 

 thunderstorm. In the bush on Friday, 

 the 2nd, an inch of rain fell in eight ! 

 minutes. An enclosed newspaper cutting j 

 describes severe thunderstorms with heavy 

 fall of hail. " The hailstones measuring 

 three inches by two inches, almost every 

 iron roof was perforated, whilst garden and 

 maize crops were completely destroyed, 

 numerous sheep were killed, whilst after the 

 storm , cattle were found cut and bleeding. 

 In one locality the storm lasted an hour, 

 hailstones as large as hen's eggs were buried 

 six inches in the ground, and the crops of 

 fruits and grapes ruined. Hailstones fell 

 weighing nine ounces." 



My brother then describes the way in 

 which the honoured festivals of Christmas 

 and New Year's day are celebrated in the 

 colony, A pic-nic in the bush is the estab- 



lished mode of spending New Year's day, 

 winding up with a ball in the evening. 

 Near their pic-nic a small party of blacks 

 were encamped on the outlook to pick up 

 the fragments of the feast. They killed an 

 Iguana, a large lizard over three feet in 

 length, which they roasted and ate wdth 

 evident relish. Continuing, he says, " from 

 what I have seen of Australia generally, I 

 have formed a favourable opinion, of course 

 their are many drawbacks owing to the 

 want of railways into the interior, the con- 

 struction of these is all that is necessary to 

 develope the resources of one of the richest 

 countries in the world. The lands between 

 the main range of mountains and the sea, 

 along the whole of the coast, will grow 

 almost every commercial plant of the globe, 

 while the mountains themselves yield gold, 

 silver, copper, tin, &c. in any quantity. The 

 fauna is abundant, the country teems with 

 life. The kangaroos are most destructive, 

 they consume an enormous amount 

 of herbage. The government has a 

 marsupial act, whereby every district 

 board pays so much per scalp, eightpence 

 for every kangaroo, fourpence for every 

 wallaby, and^ fourpence for every native 

 dogs scalp produced. The squatters and 

 settlers are taxed at the rate of two shillings 

 for every twenty head of cattle, and horses' 

 and hundred sheep, and this is called the 

 marsupial tax. The rivers swarm with fish, 

 principally fresh water cod, mullet, eels, 

 turtles, and in the tropics the alligator is 

 found. The most wonderful creature I have 

 seen is the platypus, it has the body of an 

 oppossum, and the bill of a duck, the skin 

 is most lovely. The principal bush animals 

 of a climbing nature, are the oppossum and 

 the native bear, the latter is a Bruin in 

 minature, about the size of a six months old 

 retriever dog. They climb up into the 

 highest gum trees and are very hard to 

 shoot. I one day fired six shots into one up 

 a gum tree before he came to the ground, at 



