Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/62

 "the human race, have the most wool on their heads—is it not the inhabitants of the tropics?' (Roars of laughter.)'"

As to this difference of opinion, Australian experience has amply shown what can be done for a sheep and its fleece, within or without the tropics, by strict attention to breeding, regular shearing of the fleece, and careful shepherding. How a flock would fare in tropical Australia, if left for some time to its own shepherding, and if its breeding incidents were consigned to Mr. Darwin's general provision of "natural selection," is a question we have no data to answer. But in truth our data on Mr. Crawford's question are still less complete, for the region of Australia in which we have as yet experimented upon these pastoral problems is really not a tropical country in the climatic sense of the words. Far within the tropical boundary the country still retains the peculiarities of its extra-tropical features. Waterhouse, as we have seen, pushes the line of central non-tropical Australia northwards as far as 17° of latitude—that is, six and a half degrees within the tropical limit. Although in the parts of this immediate region near the sea, there seems a somewhat regular rainy season, as Gregory inferred at the River Victoria (North-west Australia), and as Landsborough observed towards the Gulf of Carpentaria, yet, on the whole, there is a general resemblance throughout in climate and physical