Natural History in Colonisation. 139 
deemed advisable; but the garden ought to be essentially repre- 
sentative and local—a, collection of Otago plants, Otago products. 
Secondly, it might become an excellent Experimental Garden, a 
place where, appropriately, properly conducted experiments might 
be instituted as to what foreign plants are suitable for growth 
in Otago; what will flourish in its climate; what might be accli- 
matised or naturalised, so as to become useful to the settler for 
his shrubberies or gardens, his plantations or hedges ; what trees 
may be made to supply the place of the monarchs of the virgin 
forests, which are fast disappearing under the axe and fire of the 
settler—under the insatiable requirements of advancing civilisa- 
tion. Thirdly, the Exchange of seeds would probably form an 
important feature in the usefulness of your Botanic Garden. 
There are many of your native shrubs, such as the Eurebias and 
Fuchsias, which would make beautiful and acceptable additions 
to our shrubberies and gardens at home; and I am sure that our 
nurserymen and seedsmen in Britain would gladly, in exchange 
for the seeds of such of your shrubs as seemed suitable for British 
cultivation, send to your garden the seeds of any plants usually 
cultivated in their gardens or forcing-houses.~ In connection 
with such exchange of seeds would be the intercommunication of 
information regarding the plants represented by the seeds—in- 
formation mutually important, mutually desirable. Many of your 
Provincial gardens—your settlers’ gardens, I mean—are quite 
Botanic gardens in miniature: they are carrying out on the small 
seale the aims which it should be the business of the Botanic 
Garden to carry out on a larger one. In the gardens of some 
individual settlers you may find excellent collections of the more 
interesting shrubs of Otago, of Tasmania, and Australia—shrubs 
which are being naturalized ; and of British or other plants, the 
seeds whereof have been received in exchange for those of Otago 
plants. Such gardens are those of Mr Matthews, of Dunedin ; 
Mr Shaw of Finegand, on the Clutha; and the Rev. Mr Will of 
the Taeri. These are not solitary instances; for the wants, which 
a Botanic garden would supply, are extensively felt. 
University of New Zealand. 
Not less important, as a means of promoting science in your 
province, than either a Museum or Botanic Garden, at the same 
time not as superseding these, would be the establishment of a 
University, or at all events at first the nucleus thereof. Such 
an institution is desirable on many other and more important 
grounds, A University in Dunedin might become not only the 
Provincial University, or the University of the Middle Island, 
but the University of New Zealand. I believe that New 
