Australian Pictures. By Henry Willoughby. (Religious Tract Society.) —These pictures
are extremely well drawn, both in pencil and pen. The illustrations enable one to form a far more exact idea of an Australian city, and of the Australian country, with its flora and fauna, than any amount of descriptions in mere writing; while the text gives an exact and compendious account of the various Colonies and their history. There is a charming picture of a pair of those delightful birds, the laughing.jackase, a gigantic kingfisher ; bat it is sad to hear that there are sceptics found to maintain that this musical magpie, or "settler's clock" as he is also called, from his habit of laughing at noon, does not destroy snakes. Then there are the " peacocking " lyre-bird, with its tail-feathers standing erect, but curving outwards at the top in the exact shape of the ancient lyre ; and the big emu, with its comics little head. Among mammals, there ie the comic platypus, who looks as if some one had put a flattened umbrella end on his snout ; among vegetables, the comic element breaks out in the bottle-tree. In fact, Australia appears to be a country in which Nature has become uniquely humoorist in her productions. She is also, however, at her grandest. The "big trees " of the Yosemite Valley in California are hardly fit to be candlesticks for the giant gams of Australia. The biggest sequoia in America is 325 ft., but there is a eucalyptus at Mount Dew-baw (Australian names are sadly in need of reform), which is by " official " measurement 471 ft. high, and for all that any one knows, there may be others 100 ft. higher. Australia also seems able to "whip creation" in her forest-foes, which beat even those of the States. It is noteworthy, by the way, as showing how large the Irish population of the Australian Colonies is, that both in New South Wales and Victoria, the number of Boman Catholics treads hard on that of the adherents of the Established, or rather Disestablished, Church of England. In New South Wales, the former are a third of the whole population.
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