hours during the season, for which they are paid at the same
rate, and are always found in board and lodging by the owner of the run
by whom they are employed. Machinery to do the clipping is being
introduced, though not rapidly, as only a few more animals can be
sheared per day by machinery than by hand,--a process similar in its
operation to that of horse-clipping. The great advantage, however, of
machinery is the perfect uniformity of cut obtained,--a result which the
most experienced shearer cannot insure. The operator often cuts the
sheep more or less severely in the rapidity of the hand process; but
this is impossible where the machine is used, though it leaves the
animal with a shorter fleece all over its body, and consequently gives a
yield of three or four ounces more of wool from each. To feed and
properly sustain such vast numbers of sheep requires ample space; but
there is enough of that, and to spare.

Australia in its greatest breadth, between Shark's Bay on the west and
Sandy Cape on the eastern shore, measures twenty-four hundred miles; and
from north to south--that is, from Cape York to Cape Otway--it is
probably over seventeen hundred miles in extent. A very large portion of
the country, especially in the interior and northwestern sections, still
remains unexplored. The occupied and improved portions of the country
skirt the sea-coast on the southern and eastern sides, which are covered
with cities, towns, villages, and hamlets where nine tenths of the
population live. The country occupied for sheep-runs and cattle-ranches
is very sparsely inhabited. The reason for this is obvious, since the
owner of a hundred thousand sheep requires between two and three hundred
thousand acres to feed them properly. The relative proportion as to
sheep and land, as given to us, is to allow two and a third acres to
each animal. Of course there is land which would support these animals
in proportion of say one sheep to the acre; but the average is as
above.

Those who are engaged in agriculture have pushed their homes back inland
as far as the soil and the watercourses will avail them. The latter
element must be especially regarded, as the country is unfortunately
liable to severe droughts. Thus district after district has been
reclaimed from the wilderness and turned into fertile grazing lands.
There is no bound to this gradual progress of land cultivation; slow but
sure, it will only cease when the western coast bord