Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/189

 in the United States, maize meal is extensively used by all classes; and in Mexico it forms the main food of the inhabitants, although the crops of this kind of corn are very uncertain in that country. Many of my readers will remember Cobbett's oft-repeated eulogies of this kind of grain. Dr. Lang, the present member of Port Phillip in the Legislative Assembly, and whose long residence in New South Wales, and knowledge of its resources, render his remarks on colonial subjects worthy of great attention, writes as follows concerning maize.

"The maize of New South Wales, has been acknowledged by gentlemen well acquainted with the cultivation of that species of grain in the United States, superior to any they had seen elsewhere. It forms the favourite food of horses, and is used for the fattening of pigs and poultry; but it seldom constitutes an article of food for any class of free persons in the colony. Extravagance, indeed, has ever been one of the besetting sins of the Australian colonies, and the lowest class of free people in New South Wales are content only with the finest of the wheat; in so much that coarse bread can scarcely be procured in Sydney, except when previously ordered, or from those bakers that supply the troops and the other government establishments with bread of that quality by tender. I have seen various preparations of this grain, however, which I am sure would be relished as an article of food by thousands and tens of thousands of the labouring classes in the