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are mere skirmishes with the spear and waddy, in which the females take an active part; and they are, therefore, seldom of a very sanguinary character. They are staunch polygamists, the strongest man having the greatest num ber of wives, whom he usually selects from among the daughters of another tribe. The wooer, watching his opportunity, salutes the object of his affection with a sudden blow of his waddy. All her objections to the match being thus silenced, she is borne off triumphantly by her admirer, who has two or three friends ready to aid him against an attempt at rescue by her relatives. The charms of the sex are thus among the New Hollanders, as elsewhere, a very fertile source of discord. A quarrel between two natives of the same tribe is usually settled by a duel with waddies. One party, swinging his waddy round several times, brings it down, with its accumulated impetus, upon the head of his antagonist, who patiently receives the blow. Few Euro pean skulls could resist such an application as this, but on the massive cranium of the New Hollander it produces no other effect than that of a slight headache. The other combatant then returns the compliment in kind, and the “ affair” is terminated. How far the New Hollanders are capable of being civilized, is an important subject ef inquiry. Philanthropists indulge the pleasing anticipation of their being one day converted from wandering, indo lent, and miserable savages, into a civilized and Christian community. Of the first elements of civilization—the arts of agriculture—they are still, notwithstanding the presence of Europeans on the coast of Australia for fifty years, thoroughly ignorant, and it is doubtful whether a New Hollander has ever cultivated a potato on his own