Government House gates it passed through the present garden, 
leld's present house, 
The old stone wall 
had therefore been constructed some time j 
I do not know the precise date. Mrs. Macquarie's 
finally completed on June 13, 1816. Besides the chair, the 
inscription ' Mrs. Macquarie's Road, 1816,' may still be seen on a 
i the slope after leaving 
" The completion of Mrs. Macquarie's Road and its record on 
the chair was, I consider, the coping-stone of Macquarie's plans 
for the definition of the Garden and Domain. He then appointed 
a superintendent to supervise the area which he had thus 
defined. 
" Mrs. Macquarie's chair is, therefore, the true foundation-stone 
of the Botanic Gardens ; the date (June 13, 1816) inscribed on it 
is the official birthday of the Botanic Gardens. In about 10 years, 
therefore, we shall arrive at the centenary of the Sydney Botanic 
Gardens, and I hope that one way of commemorating it will be 
by the issue of an illustrated historical volume. 
" Incidentally, I may remark that 1816 is an important year to 
us for another reason, since on December 21 Allan Cunningham 
landed in Port Jackson. 
" Part of Mrs. Macquarie's Road is lined by swamp mahogany 
trees (Eucalyptus robusta). These line the north side of the wall 
from the aviary entrance to the n 
"Other trees along this Macquarie Road are the British oaks, 
from the main Domain entrance opposite the Public Library 
along the back of the hospital wall, at least as far as the St. Mary's 
entrance to the Domain. 
44 It is stated that these trees were planted by a Mr. Bigg, of 
Governor Macquarie's orders ; and the story goes that Bigg, 
having a number of oaks to plant, had one over, and planted it in 
front of his house in Phillip Street. This was the tree growing 
in the path in front of the office of the Inspector-General of Police 
for so many years, and cut down ;r only a few 
years ago. Messrs. Charles and George Kellick, who were born in 
Phillip Street, obtained the history of these plantings from their 
father, who knew Bigg well. 
" In 1816 the first Superintendent of the definitely constituted 
Botanic Garden, with the title ' Colonial Botanist,' was appointed 
by Governor Macquarie in the person of Charles Fraser, a soldier 
of the 16th Regiment, who in the following year went with Allan 
Cunningham to collect plants and seeds on Surveyor-General 
Oxley's journey of exploration to the west. 
" Let me digress for a moment. It is the fashion of Sydney 
people to speak of the Botanic Gardens in the plural, and this is 
+i? W ^i?! 1316 about : ~ The original garden, which we now know as 
the middle garden, was bounded on the north by the picturesque 
old stone wall, on the east by the aviary, on the south by the 
hothouse avenue, and on the west by the creek. The upper 
garden was formed partly by taking in land from the Domain and 
