Walking past these vast store houses, and seeing the immense stocks of goods they contain, one is at no loss to understand how Melbourne can supply the other cities of the South Pacific with goods of all kinds in almost any quantity. The fire insurance companies must have heavy risks here, as nearly all these ware houses are literally studded with their tickets. This being the case, I was aston ished to find, in the busiest part of Flin ders street, a timber yard in the very thick of them, and next to large free and bonded stores, filled to repletion with valuable goods. This is hardly in keeping with the usual sagacity of the Melbourne people. The shops of Melbourne are not so striking of their kind as the wholesale warehouses, and I confess to being greatly disappointed with them. Good shops are of course to be found, and some of them would occupy leading positions in the second rank of shops in the cities of cor responding size in the home country. But, with a solitary exception, none of them would be regarded as shops of the first magnitude in those cities. Frontage seems to be very dear, and the shops con sequently have little of it, though they run back a lojng way ; but when every allowance is n">ade it is impossible not to admit that the shops are not worthy of such a city as Melbourne. It is only within a very limited area that good shops are to be found at all, and evea there they are largely interspersed with very inferior ones. They seemed for the most part, however, to be doing an active business, and that, after all, is the main thing. The number of jewellers' shops strikes the lounger in the principal streets, but as the Directory gave the names of only 137 jewellers in business in Melbourne, they must be concentrated chiefly in the busy quarter. The same remark applies to pawnbrokers, who are very numerous in Bourke, Swanston, and Elizabeth streets, but whose numbers, all told, amount to 7 9 only, according to the authority already quoted. There can be no question, however, as to the abundance of public houses. 