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Great Britain and her Empire 545 United States ; New Zealand alone is larger than the island of Great Britain. A great part of the continent of Australia lies in the southern temperate zone, but the northern region, near the equator, is parched by heat in summer, and the whole central portion suffers from a scarcity of water, which makes vast areas of the interior permanently uninhabitable unless some means of irrigation on a large scale can be introduced. The eastern and southern coasts have always been the chief centers of colonization. Melbourne, in the extreme south, lies in a latitude corresponding to that of Washington, St. Louis, and San Francisco in the north- ern hemisphere. The country possesses gold, silver, coal, tin, cop- per, and iron. Tasmania and New Zealand are more fortunate than Australia in the diversity of their scenery and the general fer- tility of their soil, while their climate is said to possess all the advantages of the mother country without her fog and smoke. 986. Colonizing of Australia. Australia and Tasmania were occupied in the eighteenth century by a scattered population of savages in a specially low stage of civilization ; no European power had made any serious attempt to gain any foothold there until England in 1787 decided that Botany Bay near the modern town of Sydney would be an excellent and remote spot to which to send criminals of whom she wished to get rid. For many years convicts continued to be dispatched to Australia and Tasmania, but by the middle of the nineteenth century so many respectable English colonists had settled in New South Wales, West Australia, Queensland, and South Australia that they induced the English government to give up the practice of transporting criminals to these lands. The discovery of gold in 1851 led to a great rush of immigrants ; but farming and sheep raising are the chief industries now. 987. The Commonwealth of Australia. The Australian colo- nies finally decided that they would prefer to unite in a union similar to that of Canada. Accordingly, in 1900 the British Parliament passed an act constituting the Commonwealth of Aus- tralia, to be composed of six states New South Wales, Tas- mania, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and West Australia.