24 
MENAGERIE AND MUSUEM. 
12. Dec. 
rill, a surgeon in Cape Town, who very obligingly allowed me 
frequent opportunities of inspecting his collection, which, however, 
was not very numerous. 
12//^. I took a walk in the Government garden, expecting to 
see in it many things worth attention ; but I was disappointed, as it 
contained scarcely any thing except vegetables for the table. * 
In a walled enclosure, which was made by the Dutch, 
for containing wild animals, nothing is to be seen but a Gnu-f 
and some ostriches. Opposite to this enclosure is the Mena- 
gerie : its only tenants are, a lion and lioness, and a Bengal 
tiger. Perhaps no country in the world can boast of possessing 
so great a variety of wild quadrupeds as Southern Africa ; and there- 
fore, with very little trouble or expense, a large and most interesting 
menagerie might be formed here. And if in the vicinity of Cape 
Town, a well-ordered botanic garden of sufficient extent, were estab- 
lished, for the purpose of receiving plants which might casually, 
or even expressly, be collected in the more distant parts of the 
colony, the sum of money required for maintaining it would be but 
trifling, in comparison with the advantages which science, and the 
public botanic gardens of England, would derive from it. A museum 
appropriated to the reception of the rarities of the country, would 
form a proper appendage to the Government House, or might 
occupy one of the vacant squares of the garden. It might be 
the means of making the colonists, and perhaps some others, 
who seldom have any opportunity of knowing much beyond the 
town and Green Point, better acquainted with the productions of the 
country ; and would, in the end, greatly assist in bringing to light its 
natural resources. 
* There is, however, a fine plant of Strelitzia augusta an Aloe dicliotoma ; some large 
trees of Erythrina Caffra a Phoenix dactylifera, about thirty feet high ; Halleria lucida ; 
Gleditsia triacantha ; Taberncemontana ; and Hoyena pubescens. Under some very large 
trees of Pinus Pinea, which are the noblest ornament of the garden, I observed an 
eatable root growing neglected, Arum colocasia, (the St. Helena yam) ; but it is never 
cultivated, nor have I any where in the colony seen the root made use of. 
f A species of antelope. 
