sand. Around Carram, Aspendale, Mentone and Brighton, near
Melbourne; at Narrabeen, Manly, Cronulla, Coogee, near Sydney; and at a
hundred other places on the Australian coast, are beautiful beaches. You
may see on holidays hundreds of thousands of people--men, women, and
children--surf-bathing or paddling on the sands. It is quite safe fun,
too, if you take care not to go out too far and so get caught in the
undertow. Sharks are common on the Australian coast, but they will not
venture into the broken water of surf beaches. But you must not bathe,
except in enclosed baths in the harbours, or you run a serious risk of
providing a meal for a voracious shark.

Sharks are quite the most dangerous foes of man in Australia. There have
been some heroic incidents arising from attacks by sharks on human
beings. An instance: On a New South Wales beach two brothers were
bathing, and they had gone outside of the broken surf water. One was
attacked by a shark. The other went to his rescue, and actually beat the
great fish off, though he lost his arm in doing so. As a rule, however,
the shark kills with one bite, attacking the trunk of its victim, which
it can sever in two with one great snap of its jaws.

Children on the Australian coast are very fond of the water. They learn
to swim almost as soon as they can walk. Through exposure to the sun
whilst bathing their skin gets a coppery colour, and except for their
Anglo-Saxon eyes you would imagine many Australian youngsters to be
Arabs.

The beaches of Melbourne are not its only attractions. The city itself
is a very handsome one, and its great parks are planted with fine
English trees. You will see as good oaks and elms and beeches in Fitzroy
Gardens, Melbourne, as in any of the parks of old England. Melbourne,
too, at present, is the political capital of Australia, and here meet
the Australian Parliament.

Every young citizen of the Empire should know something of the
Commonwealth of Australia and its political institutions, because, as
the idea of Empire grows, it is recognized that all people of British
race, whether Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, or South Africans,
or residents of the Mother Country, should know the whole Empire.

[Illustration: COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE. PAGE 22.]

After Australia began to prosper it was found that the continent was too
big to be governed by one Parliament in Sydney, so it split up into
States, each with a constitution and gove