BALLARAT VERSUS OTAGO.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1438, 24 September 1861, Page 4

BALLARAT VERSUS OTAGO.

Ballarat was the first of the mining districts to experience the beneficial operation of the occupation license system. It was at Ballarat that Messrs. Brooke and Grant were so painfully affected by the spectacle of so many miners squatting upon Crown lands of ■which they were liable to be dispossessed ( although a previous government had legalised the occupation of half a rood for building and gardening pui poses) ; and it is among the mining population of Ballarat, according to a local journal, that the movement to Otago has commenced. What indissoluble ties weie destined to connect the miner with his " smilling homestead," and what an irresistible chairn these twenty-acre farms were to constitute ! What wandering propensities they were to subdue, and what a secure anchorage and comfortable haven they were to offer to their fortunate possessors I Half the year the miner was to be engaged in exhuming treasure from the bowels of the earth, and during the other half he would be occupied in causing its suiface to wave with golden corn. Tityrus smoking his short pipe under the shadow of his own fig-tree, and " crushing the sweet poison of misused wine" fiom his own vineyard, would devote a libation to the beueficient Brooke, and the name of Grant would be associated with the revival of the reign of Saturn. No allurements would be sufficiently strong to draw the diggers from their miniature farms, and the gold which was got under the soil would be invested in its cultivation. These were the predictions of Mr. Brooke and his colleagues, and these have formed the themes of hustings speeches innumerable. The movement of mineis from Ballarat in the direction of Otago, and the certainty that that movement will expand if the intelligence received from New Zealand should continue to be favourable, offer an instructive commentary upon the value of those predictions, and upon the efficacy of the occupation licenses as a means of attaching the population to the soil. Such expectations are obviously futile, and those who argue that these periodical wishes, can be prevented by the operation or administration, of any land law, howsoever liberal in its provisions, be tray a lamentable ignorance of the whole question. The occupation, habits, aims, and animating motives of the miner differ essentially from those of the farmer or the market gardener. The digger's labour may be more arduous, and his remuneration, taking the average earnings of his class, may be lar below those of the husbandman ; but the former holds a ticket in a lottery, in which splendid prizes do occasionally turn up, and present privation is cheerfully endured for the speculative chances of a great gain infuluro. Were he to apply the same labour, energy, and perseverance to agricultural or kindred pursuits, it is very probable that he would realize a competence, if not amass a fortune; but the gradual growth of his prosperity would be far less satisfactory to him than the sudden acquisition of a large sum by the caprice of fortune in a mining enterprise. There is a fasciuation, moreover, about gold, as the most tangible form and universal symbol of wealth, which does not attach to many of the valuable objects it represents ; and this invests the occupation of the miner with an interest with which its lucrative results are by no means commensurate. The proceeds of his labour are immediate and dhectly convertible^ He has not to wait, like the farmer, for nature's piocesses to be perfected before he can reap the fruits of his toil and leceive a return upon his capital. He is not confined to one spot, and does not willingly encumber himself with impediments to his freedom of action. Nor is it often that those who have embarked for any length of time in mining pursuits, and have been actuated by the spiiit of adventure which they induce, are content to relinquish them in favour of the more homely jog-trot and unexciting occupations of husbandry. And hence no fancy scheme of land-settle-ment, devised by crude and shallow experimentalists, will ever succeed in weaning the miner from the avocation he prefers, or in operating as a counter attraction to flourishing gold-fields which may be discovered elsewhere. Nor would it be advisable, even if it were practicable. Industry and enterprise may be safeiy left to flow in those channels which they make or themselves, unimpeded and uncontrolled by the mischievous meddling of legislatures or cabinets. The growth of agriculture and of horticulture in this colony, to be hardy and vigorous, must be spontaneous ; and we should be acting very unwisely to impose a check upon the development of our mineral resources, by offering special inducement"! to forsake them to the class of men engaged in that work. If the Otago gold-field should differ in character from those at Canoona and Kiandra, which occasioned so much excitement at the time, it is very certain that the ties alleged to bind the miner to the soil, through the medium of the occupation licenses, will be snapped like packthread, and all _Mr. Brookes feeble platitudes on the subject will be ridiculed by those in whose pretended interest they were uttered. The restless, the unsuccesful, and the adventurous would make light account of a twenty-acre allotment or a three hundied and twenty acre farm in Victoria, when a venture in the lottery of gold-digging upon a new and unexplored field was temptingly presented to them. In fact, with the occupation license system generally in force, the government of this colony would be constantly liable to lose, not only some thousands of tenants, but some thousands of pounds in the shape of arrears of rent, by every new rush of any magnitude, whether within or beyond the limits of "Victoria. Should the Tuapeka diggings turn out to be of an extensive and permanent character, numbers of persona will no doubt resort to them from this colony, with advantage to themselves, and with ultimate benefit to our own commerce ; but in the meanwhile, and until the actual nature and extent of the new gold field are accurately determined, we must repeat the advice we have previously offered, and recommend a cautious delay to those who may think of proceeding thither. — Melbourne Argus.

Antiquity of the Pig. — The pig is the existing representative of a, very ancient race of mammals which lived and died upon this earth long before theie were Christians to devour, or Jews to abhor their flesh. 'I he same species o£ wild boar that was hunted by our forefathers was contemporary with the mammoth, cavebear, and the long-haired rhinocero*. Some persons imagine that geology deals only with fossil shells or fishes ; but there is a vast deal of interest attached to the geological history of the predecessors and representatives of our domestic animals. We know that the wild ancestor of our domestic pig was in existence before the separation of England from the continent of Europe ; and that the hunter, had hunters then lived, might have cha»ed the boar through forests the site of which is now occupied by the waves of the Englith ohanncl. Mammoths, tigers, and rhinoceroces perished, bus the wild boar lived, and lives st.ll on the continent of Europe, .though, extinct here. — Old Bones : hy the Rtv. W. 8. Simonds.,