138 Dr Lauder Lindsay on the Place and Power of 
recreation ground, a promenade and place of resort.* At present 
I am not aware there is anything of the kind, while there appears 
no lack of suitable sites in the possession of the Government. I 
have found among the settlers throughout the province a strong 
feeling in favour of the establishment of a Botanic Garden; and 
so long as you possess men so admirably qualified by experience 
and tastes to act as committee men in promoting such an under- 
taking as Mr Matthews of Dunedin, Mr Martin of Saddlehill, Mr 
Bower of Anderson’s Bay, and Mr Buchanan of the North-east 
Valley, you need have no hesitation in taking the initiative. 
Many of the remarks I have made under the head ‘* Museum,” 
apply equally to the Botanic Garden. It may appear to you a 
more extensive and expensive undertaking than even the Museum ; 
visions of magnificent hothouses, greenhouses, and conservatories, 
of ornamental sheets of water and fountains, of terraces and par- 
terres, will probably appear to those of my audience who have 
vivid imaginations. But none of these are necessary to begin with ; 
they will all be added ultimately, I doubt not. A small piece of 
ground and a small staff would suffice at its first start. It is 
most desirable that the Botanic Garden should have a separate 
and competent Head as Director ; but, should the expense of such 
an arrangement be found an insurmountable obstacle, the Curator 
of your Museum might act as director for a time. Indeed, should 
amore convenient building not offer itself, the Botanic Garden 
would form an excellent and appropriate site for a new Museum 
building. The latter would be rendered all the more attractive 
by the luxuriant foliage of, and the beautiful views from, the former. 
The first aim of such a garden should be to collect together, name, 
and classify, specimens of all the plants of Otago, so that a glance 
might give the stranger or the mere townsman a good idea of the 
general vegetation of the province. By and by, the collection 
might be made to include, in proportion as the garden space was 
extended, and the garden finances permitted, the plants of the 
adjacent provinces, of the North Island and Stewart’s Island, of 
Tasmania and Australia, of the Chatham and other neighbouring 
islands. Thereafter, European plants might be added, if it were © 
* The experience and example of the Sydney Botanic Garden may be use- 
ful. It occupies one of the finest sites about Sydney, and is most tastefully 
laid out,—less, however, as a garden arranged purely for the purposes of science 
than as pleasure-grounds for the purposes of public recreation. Its attractions 
include an orchestra for the regimental band, which plays regularly on certain 
days of the week,—on which “band days” the garden becomes the most 
fashionable promenade in Sydney; and an aviary, with ponds for aquatic birds. 
But the scientific is not forgotten, for the garden possesses an excellent Botani- 
cal Library and Museum, as well as a Lecture-room, where the excellent 
Director, Mr Moore, gives public courses of Lectures on Botany. Amidst such 
environments, it would be surprising did such lectures fail to prove attractive to 
a considerable section at least of the general public. 
