Mr Foster Fitzgerald, late Colonial Secretary at Victoria, in his excellent history of Australia, contributed to the series entitled Foreign Countries and British Colonies, sets one's mind seriously thinking on the great question of Emigration.

No subject, indeed, can be of higher importance to our weary and dispirited generation than the condition and resources of the vast southern continent that forms so magnificent a portion of England's colonial empire. Statesmen and politicians are beginning at last to recognise the truth that to colonise a new country is the one great remedial measure for the suffering classes of the Old World; for all who in our overcrowded cities and professions and trades are ever vainly seeking and hopelessly awaiting the employment that never comes, the income that never is realised.

Whoever, then, can aid the youth of the empire to leave the old grooves and seek new fields of enterprise is a benefactor to the age. And Mr Fitzgerald's work affords exactly the information most necessary to the colonist. Full details are given of the climate, the soil, the various sources of wealth, with the peculiar laws and social elements of each Australian province; so the adventurous settler can at once judge for himself what locality is best suited to his habits and pursuits, his constitution and his temperament.

Maps and copious statistics are also included in the work, which brings down the history of the colonies to the present time, and leaves no point of importance untouched.