THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 1G5 



tiveness of our own Melbourne " Zoo." In none of the gardens 

 which I visited was greater neatness and good taste displayed in 

 the general ornamentation and arrangement of the animals' houses 

 and of the show plots, and nowhere did I see more attention 

 given to the rational housing and to the comfort of the animals. 



In going through America, I was naturally anxious to see as 

 much as possible of the purely American fauna, and to the dis- 

 play of such the officials in the Philadelphia Gardens have given 

 a praiseworthy amount of attention. The curators of both the 

 Adelaide and Melbourne Gardens endeavour to, as much as 

 possible, give prominence to our own fauna ; and this is as it 

 should be. Naturally our Australian animals will thrive best in 

 their own climate, and it is after seeing them in the collections in 

 foreign countries that one is able to appreciate their natural and 

 healthy appearance when seen in a garden like our Melbourne 

 one. To this end the collections become more valuable when 

 the rarer species of our own country are represented, as not only 

 do we Australians living in the cities have an opportunity of see- 

 ing the scarcer animals of our own country, but the collection 

 becomes doubly interesting to the visiting naturalist, who naturally 

 looks to seeing those animals representative of our country which 

 he cannot see in any moderately good collection in Europe or 

 America. Seeing the healthy-looking kangaroos in the paddocks 

 of the Melbourne Gardens gives one a far more adequate idea of 

 what a kangaroo really is like in nature than do the poor cooped 

 up specimens which I saw in some of the foreign collections. 



NATURAL HISTORY NOTES FROM THE TOWNSVILLE 

 DISTRICT (NORTHERN QUEENSLAND). 



Compiled bv Mr. H. Kendall. 



(Read before the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, \Zth February, 



1893J 



The following notes have been compiled from letters received 

 during the last three years from our former member, Mr. E. M. 

 Cornwall. They record some of his observations made whilst 

 living at Roseneath, a place about seven miles from Tovvnsville, 

 and, as he says, "very, very suburban" — so countrified, in fact, 

 that he was usually the only passenger to enter the train or alight 

 where the platform should have been. Possibly some items may 

 be of interest to members of the Club. 



The neighbours one reads most about in the letters are the 

 birds — 



" Shadows, colours, clouds, 

 Grass- buds and caterpillar-shrouds, 

 Boughs on which the wild bees settle," 



