12 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
The increment to the wood-estate of Victoria would be now 
already 200,000 trees annually, if some slight tending followed 
the impulse of planting; even where trees naturally abound, 
additions can be made by choices from abroad, as anyhow forest 
culture should nowhere any longer be limited to maintenance 
and increase of species possessed by the region, but should in 
amplification be extended to whatever is best and perhaps avail- 
able as superior from other lands. 
Here, where, so to say, we live under eucalyptus-trees, we are 
apt to undervalue their hygienic importance, or to discard them 
altogether. Unfortunately also the multitude, notwithstanding 
many efforts made, is not yet sufficiently informed on sanitary 
measures ; thus a large proportion of the general public does not 
even yet seem to recognise, that for plantations, such as were 
with special forethought raised since the last thirty years around 
this metropolis, pines were purposely chosen on account of the 
salubrious effect of terebinthine antiseptic exhalations from these 
particular trees—a momentous consideration, where hundreds of 
thousands of inhabitants have already crowded closely together, 
and where zymotic diseases are so frequent and often so severely 
raging, not to speak of the esthetic aspect in a zone of evergreen 
vegetation, where main-masses of trees with deciduous foliage are 
out of harmony, while a six months’ spring prevails against as 
much winter-time of colder regions; yet, for all that, what 
thoughtful people have regarded as the vegetative pride of the 
environs of Melbourne may be in danger of being sacrificed to 
capricious tastes and transient fashions. Interplantations of 
palms, bamboos, and other contrasting plants were long since 
contemplated under the shelter of the pines, to relieve any 
imaginary or real monotony produced by large masses of coni- 
ferous trees, even where they were miscellaneously grouped. Now 
to another topic. 
If merely to a slight extent the treasures of nature have 
been studied anywhere, with what enthusiasm are visited then 
new regions in appreciative knowledge or detail conversedness. 
The child even on its school-walks, the recreation-seeking pedes- 
trian, the travelling tourist,—after some previous glimpses into 
nature’s arcana—involuntarily sees more for rational and eleva- 
ting enjoyment than the rest of the people, and that uncostly 
too, and perhaps even with substantial profit. 
In whatever direction our glances are cast on organic nature, 
we perceive marvels of design from the mouse-sized monkey to 
elephantine giants, living or extinct; from the smallest hum- 
ming bird, half-a-dozen of them hardly weighing as much as an 
ordinary letter, to the now byegone Moa of giraffe-tallness; from 
the towering huge Athrotaxis (or Sequoia) cypress-pine of 
California to mosses of almost invisible minuteness,—all perfect 
in organisation for their own special purposes. But endless other 
