Climate.

Although the climate is variable, yet it is very healthy, and uncommonly fine for vegetation.  Most of the disorders which exist in the settlement are the fruits of intemperance and debauchery, the necessary result of that fatal addiction to drunkenness, which produces mental imbecility and bodily decay.  Frost is known but little; at least, ice is very seldom seen; and, I believe, snow has never yet appeared since the establishment of the colony:  Yet on the highest ridges of the remoter mountains, to which I have had occasion to allude as never yet having been passed, snow is to be seen for a long time together; and this circumstance is a proof of their elevation.  The usual weather in New South Wales is uncommonly bright and clear, and the common weather there, in spring and autumn, is equal to the finest summer day in England.  This purity and warmth of atmosphere, it may be naturally inferred, must be particularly favourable to the growth of shrubs and plants, which flourish exceedingly, and attain to a degree of perfection and beauty which is unknown to the inhabitants of this country.  The woods and fields present a boundless variety of the choicest productions of nature, which gratify the senses with their fragrance and magnificence; while the branches of the trees display a brilliant assemblage of the feathered race, whose plumage, “glittering in the sun,” dazzles the eye of the beholder with its unmatched loveliness and lustre, and presenting, on the whole, a scene too rich for the pencil to pourtray—­too glowing and animated for the feeble pen of mortal to describe with half the energy and beauty which belong to it, and without which description is unfaithful.

Natural History.

This subject has been so well treated, and the various species of animals, etc. have been so accurately described, by those who have treated on the history of this colony, that it would be superfluous in me to re-tread the ground which has been already so ably trodden.  I shall therefore content myself with describing the few natural productions of the country of New Holland, which have been discovered subsequent to the latest publication on the subject, and concerning which, consequently, no information of an accurate and public nature has yet been transmitted to this country.  The exploration of the works of nature in this immense tract of the universe, is however still incomplete; and I have no doubt but the lapse of a few years will tend greatly to the augmentation of the knowledge we now possess on this interesting subject, and will prove the fertile source of new delight and instruction to the mind which can derive enjoyment from that pure source, the contemplation of nature in her varied and astonishing works.