THE sheep of Queensland may he described under three varieties —namely, clothing, fine and medium combing, and strong-combing. By far the largest proportion of the sheep come under the first-named description. The sheep earliest introduced were of Saxon-merino origin, having been selected from the Brindley Park flock, Merriwa, New South Wales, and taken to the Darling Downs by the late Mr. Frederick Bracker for the North British Australasian Company’s station, Rosendeal, near Warwick. From this selection several of the finest flocks in Queensland had their origin, notably the Glengallan, which was afterwards brought to the front as one of the best flocks in Australia by the late Mr. John Deuchar.

From about 1839 to 1869, large numbers of merinos were imported from Germany of the Saxon-merino and Negretti type, principally by the North British Australasian Company, Mr. John Deuchar, Mr. F. Bracker, Messrs. Hodgson and Ramsay, Messrs. Leslie, McLean, and Beit, Kent and Wienholt, Donald Gunn, the late Sir Joshua P. Bell, and also by many others. During the same period large numbers of superior Saxon and German merinos were imported for speculative purposes by Mr. Tamm, the Hon. J C. Heussler, and many besides; and it is worthy of notice that the highest-priced Queensland clips of the present day trace their origin to these German merinos. In 1869, the Hon. Gordon Sandeman imported a few Rambouillet sheep, but their identity has long since been lost in the flocks of the Burnett district into which they were introduced. There is, however, a pure Rambouillet flock in Queensland, the property of the Hon. John D. Macansh, of Canning Downs, which is remarkable for the size of the carcase of the sheep, and for--the superior quality of wool and bulk of fleece. When the importation of German merinos ceased, a large number of the wool-growers introduced the blood of the Victorian fine-combing merinos into their flocks; but although admirably suited to the humid climate of Victoria, they were totally unsuited to the more arid climate of the northern colony. Mr. George Clark, of East Talgai, himself a native of Tasmania, introduced about 1870 some valuable Tasmanian merinos, and his success with that type of sheep was so marked that in the course of a very few years he established for himself the reputation of possessing one of the most valuable flocks in Queensland. At the Sydney sheep sales in 1884, he obtained the highest average for rams —two hundred and sixty guineas; at the joint sales, one of his rams fetched four hundred and seventy guineas, being purchased for one of the best Tasmanian flocks. Very large numbers of Tasmanian sheep have been introduced during the last five years, and the Queensland flocks generally may now, in 1887, be said to be in course of being remodeled on that type. The Tasmanian sheep, it may be stated, are of pure Saxon-merino, origin. The strong merino-combing type may be said to have had its origin in a flock belonging to Mr. C. B. Fisher, being a portion of his South Australian flock transplanted to his Headington Hill estate on the Darling Downs. This type of merino, however, forms but a very small proportion of the nine and a quarter million sheep now in the colony, the general opinion being that, although well suited to the close pasturage of the black soil, they will not maintain their character on the plains of the western interior.

The climate, geological formation, and herbage of western Queensland being very similar to those of the Riverina district of New South Wales, it has been found that the tendency of its western prairies is to produce a sound medium-combing wool of good quality similar to that of Riverina, and for years past almost the whole of the stud sheep for western Queensland has been drawn from well-known Riverina flocks.

It should be noted that at the time many of the Queensland "runs" were first stocked the owners had to be content with "culls" from New South Wales flocks, and the work of amelioration was in consequence very greatly retarded.

For many years it was the general opinion amongst sheep breeders in the southern colonies, and amongst naturalists in England, that fine wool could not be grown in northern Queensland; that the tendency of the climate would be to deteriorate the wool to such an extent that ultimately the sheep would produce hair instead of wool. So far, the experience in the Gulf country has not sustained that opinion. Some of the best and soundest wools in the colony are, at the present time, grown on the higher country drained by he Flinders River.

On the rich downs and volcanic soils several English breeds of sheep are raised with profit. Of these, the Lincoln sheep is by far the most generally adopted on account of the fine lustre of the wool. The fleece, the produce of a first cross between the merino and Lincoln, has of late years been in such great demand in England that this description of wool has paid the growers even better than the merino, and as the cross-breeds mature earlier and attain a much greater weight than the merinos, they are preferable for butcher’s sheep, whilst the experience of New Zealand has been that they are greatly preferred to the merino when shipped to England in the carcase.

IT is not to be imagined that because we have here abandoned detailed reference to the towns of Queensland it is for lack of material. Little townships abound, but a mere list would be fatiguing to the reader; and descriptions of hamlets ordinarily consisting of a few public-houses, stores, a hospital, a court-house, and a lock-up, besides a score or so of primitive cottages of sawn or split timber, with roofs of bark, wooden shingles, or galvanised sheet-iron, would become monotonous. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that among these must be many destined in the future to expand into great and flourishing cities, sustained by the as yet undeveloped resources of the districts rich in soil or in minerals which surround them. Only the intermittent occurrence of rainfall, which is sometimes withheld for successive years, and then mingles affliction with relief by arriving in excess and occasioning devastating floods, restrains their progress. When the art of conserving the excess of wet seasons to balance the deficiency of dry years shall have been mastered and turned to account, phenomenal progress may be confidently predicted. Already very partial, but widely separated experiments have established the fact that copious treasures of fresh water underlie the arid plains, and need but the magic touch of the artesian well-borer’s rod to gush forth in fertilising abundance on the thirsty land. In this new world everything remains to be learned respecting the application of science and industry to conditions totally distinct from anything taught by experience to people of European origin. In Australia knowledge will not merely be power, but wealth —wealth transcending the dreams of avarice.

The northeastern portion of the Australian continent forms the one colony of the group the knowledge of which takes us back to the myths and legends of wild and lawless enterprise. In the reedy and sinuous creeks and mangrove-fringed bayous of its northern coast lurked the crease-armed pirate of Malayan seas, succeeded later by the Portuguese and Spanish outlaws who infested these parts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the maps which are preserved in various European libraries, and which have been submitted to so thorough an investigation by Mr. R. H. Major, it is a fact beyond speculation that the country now called Queensland was the best known —and almost the only really well-known —portion of that wonderful southern country, the "Austrialia incognita, la quarta parte del mundo" of De Quir, called indifferently "Jave la Grande" and the "Londe of Java." In proof of this, we have only to compare the outlines of the Terra Australis Incognita as given on those ancient charts-some bearing the date of 1539 —with the outline of the coast of Queensland as it has been delineated by Flinders, King, and others, and the similarity is found to be strikingly remarkable.

This country with which we have so romantic an early acquaintance is in some respects the finest portion of the entire continent. It is watered by a network of magnificent streams. Its climate is so various that plants peculiar to all the zones from temperate to tropic c an be cultivated with success upon its surface. Its soil is rich and fruitful, and beneath it lies a hidden wealth of unworked mines whose golden store casts into the shade the Golconda treasures of the old Nizams. Enterprise has vigorously entered upon the production of wool, wine, gold, copper, cattle, grain, and the thousand and one industries that attest the prosperity and vitality of this favoured colony. Its broad expanse is dotted with the homes of pioneers, and its coast and seaboard are planted with prosperous towns. In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to tell the history of its beginnings, but who can even barely indicate the possibilities of its future?

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