was further reduced; but high prices at the end of the year increased cultivation to 36,000 acres in 1847. And thus, according to price, cultivation ebbed and flowed, constantly making more progress as small settlers became landholders, and became more steady. As a general rule it may be asserted that miners are situated in barren districts, and obliged to draw their grain and vegetables from some considerable distance. The system of eighty-acre lots enables colonists of the cultivating class to plant themselves upon land at the most convenient distance for supplying the mines. These same cottage farmers also derived great advantage from contracts for conveying ore from the mine to the port, and coals and wood to the smelting establishments, in their bullock-drays.
In 1850 the whole original scheme of the colony had disappeared: cultivation was entirely in the hands of the working classes; the capitalists and educated were engaged either as squatters, in commerce, or in mining speculations. The remains of the old ideas were only to be found in a little grandiloquent speechmaking, and, better still, in some very beautiful gardens. There were a few fortunate purchasers of town lots in the main streets who made and retained very handsome fortunes.
BONDED MYRMICOBIUS, OR ANT-EATER
