THE LATE ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, ESQ. 279 
Director or Superintendent (call him what you like), should 
be a sound, practical, working botanist, who had industry to 
maintain a correspondence with all those places, and autho- 
rity and discretionary liberty given to him to present indivi- 
duals resident in those places such plants or seeds of his gar- 
den as would induce them to correspond with him, and send 
him of their particular riches, and thus, by such interchanges, 
a reciprocal advantage would be effected. I condemned the 
present garden, as being a mere shallow sand, resting on the 
shelving sandstone rock, which in some places (in the new 
or lower garden), pierced the surface, and in every part of the 
other divisions of the garden, was only from three to five 
feet beneath it; that, in consequence, it was utterly impos- 
tible for exotics, which rose to large shrubs or trees, to exist 
in the garden above a few years, for that as soon as the tap- 
roots reached the rock (one and all had shown it in their 
leaves), ill health followed, and death eventually— witness 
the few now alive that had been introduced by the late inde- 
fatigable Mr. Fraser from Brazil, India, Ceylon, Mauritius, 
the Cape, &c., and that were in great vigour in 1831, when I 
embarked for England. These few are now in a doubtful 
state, and the fine tree of Ficus elastica, which has shown 
decided symptoms of decay from the above cause, is now, 
since my return, dead to the ground. Moreover, I pointed 
out the badly watered condition of the whole, saving after 
great rains (a rare circumstance), and intimated that a good 
site for such an establishment might be selected two miles 
from the beach, among what has been called the * Botany 
Bay swamps,’ where all our best vegetables for the Sydney 
market are grown. “But,” added I, * if her Majesty's Govern- 
ment care not for a scientific institution here, then the present 
Spot may be maintained as a morning and evening public 
Promenade, and as a vinery and vegetable-ground for the 
Governor's table.” A short time subsequent to this, Mr. 
Cunningham received an intimation that it was the wish of 
Sir G. Gipps that he should remain some few years longer in 
the colony, and a request that he would lay before the Garden 
