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frequent. In all kinds of whaling, the seamen are paid in shares at the end of the voyage or season, and therefore no capital is needed for the payment of wages. The whale fishery of South Australia, which is exclu sively in the hands of the South Australian Company, with the exception of one or two shore gangs belonging to private individuals, has not hitherto been very successful. Inexperience, defective management, the employment of old ships, or badly-selected crews, and, finally, that in definite object of the fisherman’s dread, bad luck, have been variously adduced as the causes of the failure of the Company’s whaling operations; and to some one or other of these causes it can be much more reasonably assigned than to the temperance system on which their ships have sailed. The greater number of the American ships sail on the temperance system, and French sailors are constitutionally temperate ; and yet the whaling ships of these nations seldom fail to make profitable voyages. Notwithstanding the great abundance of fish of various descriptions on the coasts of New Holland, it has been made to contribute very little to human subsistence in the colonies. A little capital and industry, judiciously employed in the snapper fishery, would afford a very handsome profit, especially if the fishmonger did not fall into the common error of demanding an exorbitant price for his commodity, thereby discouraging the demand, and defeating his own ends. It was a subject of complaint in Adelaide, that, considering the vast quantity of snappers, mullet, &c., in St. Vincent’s Gulf, and the facility with which they were caught, the price demanded was inordi nate. The abundance of snappers, barracouta, mackerel, and other species of fish, at every part of the Aus-