49 o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



the Observatory, stationed on a pleasant knoll, and screened to some extent from the 

 dust of the St. Kilda Road by plantations of trees. The first institution of the kind 

 was established at \Yilliamsto\vn in 1853, and a meteorological observatory had also been 

 founded on the Flagstaff Hill, where Professor Neumayer pursued his patient investiga- 

 tions with gratifying success. In 1863 both these institutions were combined under one 

 roof, and the present site was selected as the initial point of the trigonometrical survey 

 of the colony. The Governor and the Treasurer lent their zealous assistance to the 

 cause of astronomical science, and the Legislature appropriated the sum of ten thousand 

 pounds to the purchase of what was then, with a single exception, the largest telescope 

 in the world, the mirror being four feet in diameter. The Observatory is in communi- 

 cation by electric telegraph with a number of meteorological stations along the coast and 

 inland, as well as with those of the other colonies ; and the Government Astronomer is 

 thus enabled to prepare and issue for publication in the Melbourne morning papers a 

 weather forecast for the next twenty-four hours. The true time is likewise indicated 

 daily at noon by means of signals, and is dispatched from the Observatory by telegraph 

 to all parts of Victoria. 



The grounds of the Observatory almost adjoin the Botanical Gardens. These cover 

 an area of about one hundred acres. For landscape purposes nothing could be better 

 than the natural configuration of the ground. Two slopes, the one having an easterly 

 and the other a westerly aspect, dip down into a valley sufficiently broad to admit of 

 a lake of eight acres spreading its glassy mirror to the sky. Sedgy islands afford a 

 sequestered covert and congenial nesting-place for black and white swans and numerous 

 varieties of water-fowl ; but at the same time it is lamentable to add that, from motives 

 which are altogether inscrutable, these are being continually destroyed by poison. 

 Originally these Gardens were under the control of Baron von Mueller, one of the first 

 of living botanists; but in 1873 he was relieved of the responsibility in order that he 

 might dedicate himself exclusively to those scientific pursuits with which his name is so 

 honourably associated. The management of the place then devolved upon Mr. W. R. 

 Guilfoyle, F.L.S., who applied himself with the utmost enthusiasm, and with an artistic 

 perception of the beautiful, to remodel the Gardens in accordance with the principles of 

 the best English landscape gardening, so as to present a cultivated wildness in some 

 parts and in others a harmonious combination of artificial forms and contrasted colours, 

 the result being a success as honourable to the Director as it is gratifying to the tens 

 of thousands of persons who visit a spot so easily accessible from Melbourne by road, 

 or footpath, or water. At the same time Mr. Guilfoyle has not forgotten that these 

 Gardens are intended to subserve the interests of science as well as to minister to the 

 enjoyment of the public, and he has therefore kept both these objects in view while 

 executing his plans. Upon spacious green lawns, as soft and pleasant to the foot as a 

 three-pile carpet, are classified groups of plants and numerous examples of the flora of 

 Australasia, and of the temperate and sub-tropical regions of the globe. In fact the 

 botany of the greater part of the world may be studied in the Gardens by characteristic 

 specimens, labelled with their scientific and ordinary appellations and that of their native 

 habitat. There are fern-tree gullies moist and shadowy as those upon the distant moun- 

 tain sides, with trickling rills maintaining a tangled undergrowth in perpetual verdure. 



