-REPORT OF THE VICTORIAN GOVERNMENT BOTANIST. 197 
verted, within the last five years, from a treeless waste into an incipient 
orest. From year to year additional kinds of trees become inter- 
spersed; thus shade and shelter as well against the north-western 
desert winds, as also against the south-west antarctic storms, will be 
more and more obtained. Few even of our metropolitans seem aware 
that the verdant valleys which, within five minutes’ drive from the 
City Bridge, slope gently to the Yarra, afford already charming picnic 
grounds, on which, free from the dangerous vicinity of the reptiles of 
our ranges, field amusements can be enjoyed simultaneously with views 
of rare beauty. Access of carriages to the whole of this rising ground 
and its gullies is permitted, under the anticipation that all ordinary 
caution will be exercised to prevent injury to the young trees. By the 
gradually denser growth of Grass, Lucerne, and Clover plants, the so- 
called Cape-weed (Cryptostemma calendulaceum) has become largely 
suppressed; but inasmuch as the Director of the grounds has repeat- 
edly been accused of having brought this and other weeds, as well as 
some winged invaders, into our colony, it may be right to place it here 
on record, that the whole of these assertions is contrary to facts, and 
that already, in 1833, Baron Von Huegel noticed and recorded the 
Cryptostemma as an inexterminable weed of Australia. A gardener's 
cottage has occupied, for ths, the last of the empty old quarries, 
until then a favourite retreat of vagrants. 
For more than a mile’s length, basalt boulders have recently been 
brought from Jolimont, by permission of the City Council, to line the 
intended footpaths on both sides of the main drive. The drive itself, 
to the width of twenty feet, requires to be macadamized, for which pur- 
pose the boulders may be utilized, whenever more elegant linings can 
be substituted for them. 
By the friendly aid of the military authorities lately, walks have been 
laid out on and near the Yarra bank, towards the City Bridge. During 
the coming autumn it is intended to define these walks with many 
hundreds of rose-bushes. The fences along the St. Kilda Road, Domain 
Road, and Anderson Street, up to the point at which the iron fencings 
commence, have sunk almost into destruction. Several thousand young 
Willows, planted along both sides of the Yarra bank during the last 
cool season, have weathered fairly through this summer of drought, 
labour for watering those on the north bank having been granted by 
the Corporation. 
