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Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 11, Issue 818, 15 January 1867, Page 3

What we want here. — The Bendigo Independent says : — Mr. Anderson, a dairyman at the Big Hill, had a field of eight awes of mangold-wurtzel which wns attacked by caterpjllars and grubs, and seven acres out of the eight fell a prey. A recent heavy fall of rain partially checked the destruction. This was followed by the appearance of, not a flock, but what our informant called a "cloud" of brown birds, about the size and appearance of the wattle bird. They alighted in the field, and in a few hours the ravages were stayed, and a .clean sweep was made of the caterpillars — not one was to be seen. Having fulfilled their mission, the birds disappeared as suddenly as they had come.

The Wool Trophy. — The Western Post of 23rd ultimo says: — Nearly every breeder of any note in the Mudgee district has sent a bale of wool for the trophy at the Paris Exhibition, and a considerable number have sent fleeces to the Wool Exhibition in London. As might be expected, the greatest care has been exercised in selecting and preparing them, and the result will be looked forward to anxiously by our local men. It is said that the hoggofc flocks of last year bid fair to. eclipse any sheep bred in the district for years, and the Exhibition next year will lead to some close competition among the young sheep.

NEW" HOMES FOE ANGLO-SAXONS,

(Erom the "Daily Telegraph.") Will the earth ever be too small for our race, as many countries— -China, England, and others — are for their inhabitants at this day ? It is a curious speculation, and . one that has engaged ingenious minds, some of which have declared that the organic life of animals and plants adds perpetually to the bulk of the planet. Others have anticipated wholesale modifications in humanity : so that, being masters of the region of the air, and being otherwise developed, the family of man will be at no loss for elbow-room ; while the Darwinians affirm, with the strict and cold logic of their theory, that the doctrine of ''Natural Selections" will for ever weed the weakest out, and proportion the number of living men to the spheroid which they occupy. ' The last view seems most plausible, since those philosophers can point to the fact that, if some such principle did not govern the animated world, our earth would have been choked long ago with life. Eye-witnesses describe the clouds of passenger-pigeons which fly across the American continent as obscuring the sunlight, and stretching in a continuous line sometimes for three hundred miles by three or four in breadth. If no fixed law checked the reproduction of these birds, they would fill the world in fifty years, and crowd every living thing out of it. The locust swarms, though they are merely insects, also oppress those who have seen them with the same terrible plethora of numbers. Where they pass they hide the sky ; where they settle they cover the ground ; and their unchecked multiplication would, in a generation, make vegetation impossible. The ooze which came up on the Atlantic Cable of 1865 has been found to be almost entirely composed of the globular cases of extinct microscopic j creatures, which, could they increase without some constant law of repression, would make a jelly of the liquid sea, and produce shallows and mud-banks where it lies three thousand fathoms deep. Since a thousand germs of life perish for one that survives and grows to perfection, there is no particular reason to fear that those created things which escape the iron law of Selection will have no room in the world. It is the astronomical map which suggests the idea of over-crowding — " this little, 0, the earth" looks so ridiculously small in the planetary system by the side of the majestic Jupiter and splendid Saturn, and the vast central luminary. But since, whatever Darwinians may say, the human race does not creep more and more over the face of the globe, we really might begin to feel we were over growing the earth, if a glance at any globe did not reassure us with the conviction that this is a matter entirely concerning posterity. There is huge Central Asia to be redeemed from nomadism, and the endless islands of the Eastern Archipelago. British North America is now peopled by beavers, moose, and coyotes, rather than settlers : Australia lies almost a maiden continent; the southern islands of New Zealand, and all the groups of the Pacific, are still virgin soil. Then, too, there is the boundless interior of Africa, stored with lakes and rivers which will some day bear a commerce unimagiaed now, and rich uplands which will feed the world with new fruits and foods. If all these lands were filled, there would still be the marvellous expanse of South America, merely fringed at'present with settlements and Governments — an expanse where, if it be true that the valley of the Mississippi can sustain a hundred millions of men, the Orinoco, the LaPlata, the Para, and above all, the mighty Amazon, could doubtless feed more souls than now exist in the entire world.

A pioneer of civilisation — the learned Agassiz — has just reported upon the watersheds and network of this last magnificent river. Looking at the ordinary atlasses, persons might be apt to imagine that a good deal was already known of the vast continent between the Pacific and Atlantic seas. It is nicely filled in with names on the map, and it is made up of neatly defined States — Brazil, the Guianas, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Chili, La Plata, Patagonia, an. l the rest. Nay, we hear of wars and revolutions, all in the most regular manner, as if, in our usual human fashion, the land had been thoroughly possessed first of all, and then the throat-cutting business characteristic of "land-hunger" had followed. But in reality next to nothing of the vast peninsula is held or explored ; and as to population, the inhabitants of Brazil are a mere handful of Portuguese and Indians, while Brazil alone is ten times as big as all Prance.- The valley of the Amazon itself and its river are terrestrial wonders, which we are only beginning to grasp, though Martius and Spix, Helmreic'-ien, Humboldt, Pohl, d'Orbigny, Willces, and so many others, have tried to tell us of the marvellous land. It has been too big for them ; but lately three very good observers have prospected in this wilderness of nature. Mr. Bates, the naturalist, has given us an admirable book on its natural history: Captain Burton is composing one on the races and features of the land ,• and Professor Agassiz has returned to Boston with such an account of the capacity and extent of the Nile gf South America as must make the mouths of geographers water. Indeed, the Nile is a mere mountain torrent compared with this superb river, by far the largest in the world — a river which drains the better half of a continent into its channel, and,, in flowing out into the sea darkens the waves for eighty miles with the rich alluvinl washings from millions of acres of forest and savannah. Agassiz computes at 4000 miles the entire course of the stream, and he describes its valley — if that name can be used — as a vast and unbroken plain, perfectly level, and densely covered with the most luxuriant vegetation. Over parts of that plain the great river sometimes overflows, when a pirague may be rowed for a hundred leagues in any' direction, through labyrinths of gorgeous tropical growth, of coral-tree, magnolias, screw-pine, palm, uranias, eugenias, casuarinas, bread-fruit, and wild melons, with flowers of daring splendour, and creatures of bold and beautiful shape and hue. Yet the great naturalist declares this glowing and humid region to be very healthy, and fitted for universal colonisation. Mr. Bates has also observed that in his opinion the crowning race of man — the last production of "genus homo, ordo primates," will make its home under the equator in these magnificent solitudes, of which the mighty Amazon is but the principal drain, a thousand other streams of volume feeding it from endless forests and. meadows where no one has ever yet penetrated. The temperature is Italian, rather than African ; for the great Amazon, flowing always against the trade winds, keeps up a healthy stir in the atmosphere, which

mitigates the heat. Agassiz has passed from the ocean-like mouth of the river, to its myriad sources in the Andes, and. he also thinks that there is a region here for unwritten histories, and for races of men as numerous as the sands in the sea.

It is plain that the era of this vast southern land is coming. The Brazilians at Rio, San Salvador, and Para are a mere sprinkling .of idle Portugese and negroes, who have lighted upon its confines like flies on the edge of a sugar-basin. The colonisation of the noble region will begin in earnest from the fecund and energetic races of the Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. The Americans, with whom the. Monroe doctrine is an ethnic instinct, the swarming Germans, and the people of our own crowded islands, will by-and-bye begin to occupy the Amazon's valley. To them it will reveal the secrets of that wealth which it has hoarded since the making of the world ; and who knows what new arts and forms of life may not blossom from old civilisations transported into such glorious latitudes ? There are signs unmistakeable to the observant eye, which show that emigration will soon take this road. Besides the exploratory visits of savants and travellers, the new route from Australia and New Zealand by the isthmus is directing attention to South America. Last week there was a large and earnest meeting held in the City to open up the Nicaragua, route between the two seas, after the^aipf Captajn Bed- • ford Pirn ; and we have lately "had" for our guest here a dowager Queen of the islands which lie upon this new and grand high road of commerce. All these things point to a new impulse of trade and emigration, which will in a few generations make the vast Pacific sea, with its clusters of gemlike islets and its gorgeous continent of South America, familiar things. Great cities will rise along the mighty stream, and noble ports will open under the shadows of the Andes, where navies — of which no keel is yet laid — will float. Dr. Cumming, who expects the millennium daily, may hesitate to believe in such a future ; but, as we hear of these "signs of the times," we incline to agree with the travellers, that the infinite waters of this Queen of Rivers were not created to give drink to tapirs and jaguars alone.