88 TlMEHRl, 
purpose of adding a Commercial Hall. In commenting 
upon this proposal, the Gazette said it was only surpris- 
ing that such a proje6l had not long before been effected. 
With a population of over 18,000, the city was without 
that kind of place of rendezvous for news and business 
which had been found advantageous in the pettiest com- 
mercial town of every other part of the world. The 
Town Council would be well supported in carrying out 
the project, which should embrace, besides the Town 
Hall, a public library of standard works of reference, and 
a Museum of Natural History. 
However, the Government was not on very good terms 
with the Town Council at that time, and refused to 
grant the site, so the project fell to the ground as far as 
that body was concerned. But there were other men 
ready to carry out the proposed obje6ls, one of them 
being William Hunter Campbell, a young Scotch 
lawyer who had arrived in the colony in the latter part 
of 1841. To his exertions and those of Dr. BALFOUR, 
Professor GRAHAM had said, the Botanical Society of Edin- 
burgh mainly owed its existence, and when leaving 
Edinburgh for Demerara, the Professor trusted he might 
find time to cultivate, in so luxuriant a field, his favourite 
science of botany. In Demerara young CAMPBELL found 
friends in the well-known Sir William Arrindell, Dr. 
BONYUN, and a few others, and bringing with him an 
enthusiastic love for science, the idea of a comprehensive 
Society took his fancy, or perhaps originated with him 
alone. However this may have been, he became the 
moving spirit in initiating the scheme, which was to in- 
clude an Agricultural society, a Commercial News Room, 
a Literary Society with a Library, and a Natural History 
