some resemblance to a half-open umbrella with the whalebone slightly out of order. Near this, in Market Street, may be noticed the remains of the "Sporting Emporium" of Blanche, destroyed by a gunpowder explosion on the eve of Christmas Day. Further down in Little Flinders Street, is a new store (still there) large for the time, built for Mr. Rucker, and overtopping the few cribs around; away up towards the north of William Street, is a mansion with some attempt at a tower, where Mr. C. H. Ebden once lived. "Hodgson's Folly" stands in all its glory near the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, its nearest neighbours being two humble tenements of the cot or cottage grade, to which it seems to give a cold shoulder. Beyond Swanston Street there is no attempt at street forming; it is all open country, with houses and gardens scattered about, whilst away on the side of a beautifully timbered hill is the Scots' School, as if quite beyond the limits of location. The river is well hit off with its half dammed falls; the well-known old ferryman's hut on the south side, and a gay-looking survey tent not far off. Such is a meagre outline of "Deaf Adamsons's" sketch, but if the chapters I am now inditing should ever—as I hope they will—be published in a collected form, the exhumed copper-plate will, in all likelihood, figure as a frontispiece. On the 1st of January, 1840, the Tree of Colonisation, planted as an acorn in 1835, had not only taken deep root in the soil, but had grown into a vigorous bole, from which commenced to shoot those branches of Civil Government and Social, Religious, Charitable, and Literary institutions—the outgrowth of modern civilisation, which I shall endeavour to describe under their respective heads. Truly may it be written of Melbourne that thenceforth it so increased and expanded through those material and intellectual developments, as to amply verify the classic legend—vires acquirit eundo, which its Corporation, in the after time, so fittingly assumed as the Civic motto.
