ON COLONIAL WINES. 243 
but not needed here, since the atmosphere supplies it 
abundantly. 
When the temperature is not low enough to require 
a large supply of carbon to maintain animal heat, then 
as the carbon must go somewhere, and be got 'rid of 
somehow, the liver and kidneys have to do the work 
when they are, perhaps, already overworked. 
I trust I am neither a theorist nor a quack. I hate 
quackery of all kinds, and my education has taught 
me that theories are worth little more than that they 
serve to arrange and harmonise a certain number of 
facts. The fact in this case is that liver and kidney 
diseases, nearly unknown in wine-drinking countries 
are almost universal in these colonies, and either form 
the basis of prevailing complicated diseases, or are 
complicated with them. Beer and spirits have their 
work to do in cold and damp climates, not such as 
' ours - in tensely hot and dry. Wine has its beneficial 
work to do in Victoria, and it is gratifying to watch 
the steady progress hitherto made, mainly during the 
last five or six years. 
PREJUDICES TO BE OVERCOME, EVEN AT THIS DAY. 
I have taken a fair amount of trouble to ascertain 
the depth of prejudice against pure natural wine 
formerly entertained by almost every grade and class of 
society m this and the neighbouring colonies. It is fast 
dying out. I find in this city abundance of evidence on 
all hands supplied by the daily experience of the wine- 
shops, that labouring men soon acquire a taste for it and 
use it in preferance to beer. Gentlemen put on their 
tables, sound, good, pure wine, and they and their guests 
enjoy it ; but there are two great bars in the way of the 
