custom of the spider-world accounts for the
small proportion of spiders in comparison to
the immense number of eggs which they
produce. So formidable a difficulty could only
be met by rearing each spider in a separate
cage; whether this separation is practicable—
that is to say, whether it can be made to repay
the trouble it would require—is a matter yet
to be decided.

Against M. Bon's treatise on behalf of
spider's silk, M. Reaumur urged further
objections. He asserted, that when compared
with silkworm's silk, spider's silk was deficient
both in quality and in quantity. His
calculation went to show that the silk of
twelve spiders did not more than equal that
of one bombyx; and that no less than fifty-
five thousand two hundred and ninety-six
spiders must be reared to produce one pound
of silk. This calculation is now held to be
exaggerated; and the spirit of partisanship
in which M. Reaumur's report was evidently
concocted, favours the supposition that he
made the most of any objections he could
bring to bear against M. Bon.

M. Bon's experiments are valuable as far
as they go; spider's silk may be safely set
down as an untried raw material. The
objections of M. Reaumur, reasonable in some
respects, are not at all conclusive. It is of
course undeniable that the silkworm produces
a larger quantity of silk than any species of
spider; but, on the other hand, the spider's
silk may possess certain qualities adapted to
particular fabrics, which would justify its
cultivation. At the Great Industrial Show,
we shall probably find some specimens of
spider's silk; such contributions would be
useful and suggestive. The idea of brushing
down cobwebs to convert them into ball-room
stockings, forces upon us the association of
two most incongruous ideas; but that this
transformation is not impossible, the Royal
Society, who are the possessors of some of
M. Bon's spider-fabric, can satisfactorily
demonstrate.

FATHER GABRIEL; OR, THE
FORTUNES OF A FARMER.

A BACHELOR'S station in the Bush, or even a
bachelor's farm, is generally a wretched place.
Founded to make money and nothing else,
decency and comfort are little cultivated. A
rude bark-covered hut for the overseer or
master; another, still ruder, for the servants;
the ground bare beaten with the feet of cattle,
not a vestige of garden, although the soil be
ever so fertile. A stockyard, ankle deep in
dust, are the usual characteristics. The head
of the station being a young man, who may
often be found, dirty, barefooted, in his shirt
sleeves, sitting alone, in melancholy state, on
an old tea-chest, with a mess of salt meat and
tea without milk before him, longing for a visit
from a neighbour or traveller, without books
or newspapers, obliged, if he would keep up
his authority, to hold very little communication
with his men.

As for the men, harassed and haggard
looking, ragged, unshaven, unwashed, they
crowd together in an evening, perhaps fifteen
or twenty in number, smoking, and swearing,
and jabbering with two or three black gins,
their only female companions, purchased,
stolen, or strayed from a neighbouring tribe.
But on the stations of married squatters, or
where small settlers of a good sort have settled
either on grants or purchases, as dairy and
grain-growing farmers, a very different sight
is presented,—wives and gardens, children and
green vegetables, improve the fare, the scenery,
and the society. Thank heaven, every day
fixity of tenure is making its way, and in a
few years there is no reason why pastoral
Australia, with immense advantages of climate,
should not resemble that pastoral Scotland
whose domestic virtues have afforded so
many exquisite pictures for poets and
romancists.

When I first landed in the Colony, agriculture
was reckoned very low, the Highland
spirit of contempt for rural toil had descended
on our nomadic aristocracy. Not being bred
to it, I could not share the feeling; and after
months of men-companions, and salt meat and
damper fare, grateful to my eyes was the
view of what I will call (to mention real
names would not be fair) "Father Gabriel's
Happy Valley." A bright oasis, that within
the memory of the oldest settler had not been
touched by drought; green, and corn-waving,
when all around the other side of the range
was brown and barren; cheerful and alive too,
with fat children running and riding in lay,
for children with us ride almost as soon as
they walk; handsome young wives, and nice
tidy old women busy washing under the
verandahs of their cottages, or in their
gardens, or making cheese in the open air under
a great tree, converted into part of a machine
for cheese pressing.

From a great field of oaten hay, "The
mowers' scythes sent back a flickering silver
sheen," where Father Gabriel, a hale old
man, led the way before a long string of
sons and sons-in-law, while the little ones
followed and bound the sheaves. It was
almost a home scene, beneath a brighter sun
and clearer blue sky than is ever found in
England.

Father Gabriel, having been one of the
early free-farmer settlers, had obtained a grant
in this favoured spot, and made the most of
it by growing wheat in increasing quantities,
which during a four years' drought, he sold at
14s. and 15s. a bushel. With the help of a
long family he became really rich; but instead
of turning "gentleman" after the vulgar
colonial fashion, or entering into wild
speculations, he had pursued his plain Yeoman
style of life, collecting round him as many as
possible of his neighbours from his native
country, so that he had formed a sort of