and currant-buns, to enable them to withstand the exhausting interval between six a.m. and eight o'clock, when serious breakfast occurs. Shearers diet themselves on the principle that the more they eat the stronger they must be. Digestion, as preliminary to muscular development, is left to take its chance. They certainly do get through a tremendous amount of work. The whole frame is at its utmost tension, early and late. But the preservation of health is due to natural strength of constitution rather than to their profuse and unscientific diet. Half an hour after sunrise Mr. Gordon walks quietly into the vast building which contains the sheep and their shearers—called 'the shed,' par excellence. Everything is in perfect cleanliness and order. The floor swept and smooth, with its carefully planed boards of pale yellow aromatic pine. Small tramways, with baskets for the fleeces, run the wool up to the wool-tables, superseding the more general plan of hand-picking. At each side of the shed-floor are certain small areas, four or five feet square, such space being found by experience to be sufficient for the postures and gymnastics practised during the shearing of a sheep. Opposite each square is an aperture, communicating with a long, narrow, paled yard, outside of the shed. Through this each man pops his sheep when shorn, where he remains in company with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted out. This being done by the overseer or manager, supplies a check upon hasty, unskilful work. The body of the woolshed, floored with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly victims. This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it till the pen is empty. When this takes place, a man detailed for the purpose refills it. As there are local advantages, an equal distribution of places is made by lot.
On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr. Gordon walks, with an air of calm authority, down the long aisle. Seventy men, chiefly in their prime, the flower of the working-men of the colony, they are variously gathered. England, Ireland, and Scotland are represented in the proportion of one-third of the number; the balance is composed of native-born Australians.
Among these last—of pure Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent—are to be seen some of the finest men, physically
