Tue drought in Australia, of the effect of which on the export of wool and, wheat Reuter advised us some three weeks ago, was fully experienced at the beginning of last month. According to the Melbourne Leader the situation in Victoria was very serious and had been growing worse for weeks. Favourable reports of the crops came from only a very few places. In the drier districts things were in a miserable condition; in some most of the wheat would be cut for hay and that, the paper says, will be poor. In another part thousands of acres would not be fit for cutting unless rain came speedily, and much of it was too far gone to be of any value; at another, out of 1,500 acres of wheat not one would be worth cutting, while at another haifa tov of fodder to the acre was expected. From many other districts reports had come in, some to the same effect as the above and from others that the harvest prospects were very poor and the cattle suffering from want of water. Severe frost had in some places affected root crops. Besides the injury inflicted on the farmers by the unpropitious weather the large number of foxes were greatly complained of, and it was said that they threatened to become as serious a nuisance as the rabbits. The Government was blamed for not taking measures to abate the number of the foxes, and our contemporary remarks that it seemed as if they would be allowed to increase until they cost the colony thousands of pounds annually in futile attempts at annihilation, In one district ten shillings a head had been paid by the Council, supplemented by the same amount from large landed proprietors, and this had resulted in the destruction of several hundreds. Besides the fox, the locust was doing much injury
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.