12 
inaugural address. 
The increment to the wood-estate of Victoria would be now 
alreatly 200,000 trees annually, if some slight tending followed 
the impulse of planting; even where trees naturally abound, 
additions can be made by choices from abroad, as anyhow forest 
culture should nowhere any longer be limited to maintenance 
and increase of species possessed by the region, but should in 
amplification be extended to whatever is best and perhaps avail- 
able as superior from other lands. 
Here, where, so to say, v/e live under eucalyptus-trees, we are 
;ipt to undervalue their hygienic importance, or to discard them 
altogether. Unfortunately also the multitude, notwithstanding 
many efforts made, i.s not yet sufficiently informed on sanitary 
measures ; thus a large proportion of the general public does not 
even yet seem to recognise, that for plantations, .such as were 
with special forethought raised since the last thirty years around 
this metropolis, pines were purposely chosen on account of the 
salubi'ious effect of terebinthine antiseptic exhalations from these 
piarticular trees— a momentous consideration, where hundreds c>f 
thousands of inhabitants have already crowded closely together, 
and where zymotic diseases are so frerpient and often so severely 
raging, not to speak of the {esthetic aspect in a zone of evergreen 
vegetation, where main-masses of trees with deciduous foliage are 
out of harmony, while a six months’ spring prevails against as 
much winter-time of colder regions ; yet, for all that, what 
thoughtful people have I'egarded as the vegetative pride of the 
environs of Melbourne may be in d:inger of being sacrificed to 
ca 2 jrici<ius tastes and transient fjishions. Tnterplantations of 
palms, bamboos, and other contrasting plants were long since 
contemplated under the shelter of the pines, to relieve any 
imaginary or real monotony produced by large masses of coni- 
ferous trees, even where they were miscellaneously grouped. Vow 
to another tojiic. 
Tf merely to a .slight extent the treiisures of nature have 
been studied anywhere, with what enthusiasm are visited then 
new regions in apjireciiitive knowledge or detail conversed ness. 
The child even on its school-walks, the recreation-seeking pedes- 
trian, the travelling tourist, — iifter some jirevious glimpses into 
nature’s arcana — involuntarily sees more for rational and eleva- 
ting enjoyment than the rest of the people, and that uncostly 
too, !uid pei'lmp.s even with .substantial profit. 
In whatevei" direction our glances sire c.ast on organic nature, 
we perceive marvels of do.sign from the mouse-sized monkey to 
idephantine giants, living or extinct; from the .smallest hum- 
ming bird, half-a-dozen of them hardly weighing as much as !in 
ordinary letter, to the now byegone Moa of giraffe-tallness; from 
the towering huge Athi-otaxis (or Sequoia) cypre.ss-pine of 
California to mosses of almost invisible minuteness, — all perfect 
in oi-gani.sation for their own special purpose.s. But endless other 
