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by doing duty pro aris et foci's as a volunteer protective force. S o m e of the gatherings came off, whereat prevailed a concensus of opinion that it was the bounden duty of the Government to provide sufficient protection for the community. T h e diggers, glutted with gold, came rolling into town, their number considerably swelled by a dearth of water on the goldfields. Nuggets were in abundance, and cash was consequently not scarce, so far as the public-house traffic was concerned. Little Bourke Street was in a perfect state of jubilation, and the dens of immorality there and in other parts reaped a golden harvest. Drunken diggers staggering about in all directions both in daylight and dark, were picked up by the harpy harlotry of the period, not knocked down or garroted, but coaxed off to haunts of infamy, plundered during the night, and sent forth penniless in the morning. Singular, too, so far as open nocturnal street outrages were concerned, there were never fewer at any Christmas times for years, and this was accounted for by the fact that the most practised thieves were away on circuit, doing such good business at the several goldfields, or on the main roads leading thereto, as to be unwilling to abandon their lucrative pilferings for what they considered might be a more precarious chance in town. But here they miscalculated, and the grave error was not repeated at any Christmas ever after. The last escort for the year arrived from M o u n t Alexander on 31st December with 10,598 ozs, and only 36 ozs. were received in town from Ballarat, the escort from which place was to be discontinued. It is difficult, from the desultory and round-about manner in which the various discoveries of the early goldfields were communicated to the Melbourne newspapers, to trace with absolute certainty, from their perusal, the precise dates of such remarkable events. However, on the 12th October, 1853, the Legislative Council of Victoria appointed a Select Committee consisting of the following members, viz.:—Dr. Greeves (Chairman), Messrs. William and Mark Nicholson, J. F. Strachan, John Hodgson, H . E. Childers, and James Graham " to consider the propriety of requesting His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor to take such steps as m a y enable the Council to mark in a substantial manner their high appreciation of the services rendered by Mr. E. H . Hargreaves to this colony by the discovery of goldfields in the continent of Australia; and also what other persons are entitled to reward for the discovery of the Victorian goldfields." Several witnesses were examined, and m u c h light was shed upon the subject. T h e report of the Committee was ordered to be printed — i o t h March, 1854, and from it are compressed these facts :—In March, 1850, M r . William Campbell, of Strath Loddon, discovered, on the station of Mr. Donald Cameron, of Clunes, in company with that gentleman and two other friends, several minute pieces of native gold in quartz. T h e circumstance was avowedly concealed at the time, from an apprehension that its announcement would prove injurious to Cameron's run. Observing, however, the migration of the population to N e w South Wales, and the panic created throughout the whole colony, and especially in Melbourne, on the ioth June, 1851, M r . Campbell addressed a letter to Mr. James Graham, of Melbourne, stating "that within a radius offifteenmiles of Burnbank, on another party's station, he had procured specimens of gold." Mr. L. J. Michel, with Messrs. W m . Habberlin, James Furnival, James Melville, James H e a d o n and B. Greenig, discovered the existence of gold in the quartz rocks of the Yarra Ranges, at Anderson's Creek, in the latter part of June, and showed it on the spot to Dr. Webb-Richmond, on behalf of the Gold Discovery Committee, on the 5th July, 1851. Full particulars of the locality were communicated to the Lieutenant-Governor on the 8th, and on the 16th a sample of gold, procured by washing the alluvial soil in the same neighbourhood, was exhibited to the Gold Discovery Committee. About the same time Mr. James Esmonds, with Messrs. Pugh, Burn and Kelly, obtained gold in the quartz rocks of the Pyrenees, near Mr. Cameron's station. This was exhibited by Esmonds at Geelong on the 5th July, and the precise locality indicated on the 22nd. In June, 1882, an interesting discussion was maintained in the correspondence columns of the Argus, upon the early gold discoveries in Port Phillip, and to some of the contributors I a m indebted for several of the facts n o w detailed. Mr. J. T. Osmond, of St. Kilda, .who, m a n y years ago, kept a grocery establishment in Little Flinders Street, at the rear of the present Union Bank, stated that he knew " G u m , the Gold-finder," who, in 1847, called at his shop and purchased £ 2 0 worth of goods there, paid for, as was believed, from the proceeds of gold-finding. M r . O s m o n d also averred that ccc