THE CITY OF MELBOURNE. 



473 



Victoria Street terminates at the grounds of the Benevolent Asylum, occupying one 

 of the most elevated sites in the town of Hotham. The institution owes its origin 

 mainly to the joint efforts of Mr. J. P. Fawkner and Sir John O'Shanassy, ;m ,l the 

 foundation stone of the modest edifice, which then sufficed for the accommodation <>( a 

 mere handful of aged and infirm people, was laid by Mr. Latrobe upwards of forty 

 years ago. It now shelters between six and seven hundred inmates, and the demands 



upon the charity an 

 much in excess of the 

 resources of the establish- 

 ment to cope with them, 

 that the expediency of 

 disposing of the buildings 

 of the ten acres of 



THE COLLINGWOOD TOWN HALL. 



orchard, flower gardens and pleasure grounds by which they are surrounded, is beginning 

 to be generally recognized, and the removal of the Asylum to more spacious premises, 

 with a larger area of land, a few miles from Melbourne, is merely a question of time. 

 In the suburbs, as in the city itself, certain industries seem to be drawn together 

 by the force of attraction and cohesion, and without any obvious reason. Hotham is 

 the principal seat for the manufacture of agricultural implements, and many acres of 

 ground are covered by the extensive works of different firms. Each establishment has 

 arisen from comparatively small beginnings to great magnitude and importance ; and the 

 energetic " captains of industry," to whose enterprise they owe their foundation and 

 present prosperity, have every reason to be proud of their work. The local Meat 

 Market concentrates most of the wholesale carcass trade, and the extent of the business 

 annually transacted there may be gauged by the fact that it involves the exchange of 



