HOW AUSTRALIA SUFFERS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13034, 30 March 1910, Page 4

HOW AUSTRALIA SUFFERS.

■lt is to be hoped that more reliance can ‘be placed on the contents of “The Real Siberia,” “Canada As It Is,” “Bed Russia,” and other works of John Foster Fraser than the information he is likely to convey in his promised publications on Australia and New Zealand, at least, if we may. judge of the opinions he has already expressed about the colonies. The Australians, areu up in arms Fraser for; venturing ‘to express opinions about people he saw only on a* flying a visit which, certainly jjid not.afford him mnch opportunity of studying the characteristics of those he intended to write about. ' Australia. is a, - much-maligned country;'arid itis not Surprising that'but cousins should object ;to further mjsrepr©sohtations. That, there is any amount of false impressions about the Commonwealth, may-be been from the following extract from a French text-book on Australia;— “What strikes the European traveller most on arriving in this antipodal country is to see the order of nature to whioh.be has been accustomed completely reversed. Thus, the seasons are inverted: January marks the middle of summer, and July the middle of winter. Midnight here is noon there. When it is fine in Australia the barometer falls; it rises to announce -bad weather. Our longest day .is in June; with the Australians it is in December. The heat blows from the north, the cold from the south; it is on the summits that the atmosphere is wartnest. The same contradiction exists in everything. The swans,are black in New Sontb Wales, and the,eagle? white; the, bees have.no sting, the birds no song. The . wolf appears in the day,’ and the cuckoo is heard only at night. There are some quadrupeds that have a beak and lay eggs, whilst others are provided with a sack to,carry their young.’, .-.The: cherries have no stones. The pears that here are mellow seem there to have, been carved in oak. The trees for the most part give no shade, because their leaves are turned edgewise to the light, i instead of being flat.”