Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/61

 upon the sheep under a tropical sun. The Australian colonists have had many years' experience of wool-growing in latitudes close to the tropics; and latterly they have passed with their fine-woolled sheep several hundred miles within the tropical boundary. And yet they shear annually a fleece of the finest quality from the still healthy and thriving sheep.

Mr. Landsborough is not less impressed than his fellow-colonists that the pastoral empire of the future is to be projected yet much further into tropical Australia. Science, sitting at home, speaks in one way on this subject; experience, working upon the actual scene, speaks in another. The following passage-of-arms between these two opponents occurs at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, held in London on the 11th May last (1863), at which Mr. Landsborough was present, and it is quite a refreshing variety to the monotonous dignity of more ordinary procedure:—

"Mr. Landsborough stated that, from his experience of sheep-rearing, Queensland was eminently adapted for the growth of wool, and the climate suitable for European constitutions; the Plains of Promise (part of the fine country above spoken of) were as fine a pastoral country as he had seen.

"Mr. Crawford was of opinion that wool could not be grown in the tropics; sheep were intended for a temperate climate, and the fleece was given to protect them from the cold. In the tropics the fleece was not required.

"Mr. Landsborough.—'You are theorizing. Who, of all