wn consumption. The
quality of colonial tobacco used to be complained of; but that objection
no longer exists. Moreover, people who cannot complete their remittances
for necessaries, have no right to be nice in their choice of luxuries. I
am confident that I am within the mark, when I say, that 50,000l.
sterling per annum are paid to Americans and others who import snuff and
tobacco! This is a sum assuredly worth saving, and which the Colonists
could easily save, by encouraging the growth and consumption of their
own produce.

After what I have written upon the subject of Australian agriculture, I
may be thought to be making a bold assertion in saying, that the
necessity for the importation of grain might, in a great measure, be
done away with in Australia. Nevertheless, such is my opinion; and I
will proceed to give my reasons. In the first place, there is a great
waste of wheat, as well as of every thing else, on every farm in the
Colony. There is no gleaning; and what with the bad and careless
threshing and the ill-thatched and worse-built stacks, which admit the
rain, whereby thousands of bushels of wheat are destroyed, the waste is
beyond any one's conception who has not actually witnessed it. In the
second place, there is not nearly so much wheat grown in Australia as
there might and ought to be. A simple process of irrigation, such as the
Chinese or the Javanese, the machinery for which would not cost 5l., and
would employ only two men when in operation, applied to the wheat-fields
in dry seasons once a month, would save many a crop. All, or nearly all
the wheat in the Colony, is grown on the banks of rivers, which, though
they cease to flow in a season of drought, have always water in the deep
parts of the channel or "water-holes." It requires no argument to prove,
that irrigation, in such situations, is a very simple matter. Two
Javanese, by means of a long lever attached to a tall tree on the bank
of a river, with a large bucket and string at one end, and a string to
hoist up by at the other end, will keep a small stream of water running
over and fertilizing the neighbouring paddy-fields all day long, without
fatiguing themselves. The Chinese water-wheel is also a simple and cheap
contrivance, and would throw up water enough, in two hours, to
irrigate, or even to inundate a tobacco or wheat-field. All that is
wanted, besides the labour of two men, is a series of wooden troughs to
convey the water from the rive