Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/306

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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Society of London, and other similar distinctions. He was elected one of the few (only thirty British subjects being eligible) honorary members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He has published about a hundred memoirs on every branch of zoology and palæontology in the Annals of Natural History and other periodicals.

M‘Crae, George Gordon, is the eldest son of the late Andrew Morison M‘Crae, at one time a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, who emigrated to Sydney in 1839, but afterwards settled in Port Phillip, where he abandoned his profession, and took up a station at Arthur's Seat, Mornington. Mr. M‘Crae, sen., relinquished squatting in 1851, on being appointed police magistrate and Goldfields Warden at Kilmore, and died about 1874. Mr. George Gordon M‘Crae's mother, whose maiden name was Georgiana Huntly Gordon, was a woman of remarkable general ability and culture, and an admirable artist. She was born in London in 1804, and married Mr. M‘Crae, sen., in 1830, arriving in Hobson's Bay with her children on March 1st, 1841. She died at Hawthorn, near Melbourne, on May 24th, 1890. Mr. G. G. M‘Crae's uncle, Dr. Farqahar M‘Crae, formerly of the Enniskillen Dragoons, was one of the first medical men to start practice in Melbourne. Another uncle, Captain Alexander M‘Crae, of her Majesty's 84th Regiment, was the first Postmaster-General of Victoria. George Gordon M‘Crae was born at Anchorfield, Leith, Scotland, on May 29th, 1833, and received the principal part of his education from a private tutor at Arthur's Seat, his father's station. When about sixteen he went into a merchant's office in Melbourne, but only remained a year, and tried banking, but ultimately entered the Victorian Civil Service in Jan. 1854, in which he holds the position of Deputy Registrar-General, Senior Examiner of Patents, and Registrar of Copyrights. In the same year Mr. M‘Crae joined the Volunteer force, and served eight years. In 1864 he revisited Scotland, and spent some time in France. In 1871 he married Miss Augusta Helen Brown; and in 1887 he occupied a second leave of absence in exploring Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Bourbon. Mr. M‘Crae was in intimate association with the literary circle typified by the names of R. H. Horne, Henry Kendall, Lindsay Gordon, and Marcus Clarke. He has contributed largely to the colonial press, most of his verses appearing in the Melbourne Australasian, and a large number of pieces, prose and verse, in Sydney Athenæum and Critic and Centennial Magazine. He contributed a naval novel, "Afloat and Ashore; or, the Story of Oginski" to the Sydney Mail, and "Under the Yellow Flag," a quarantine experience in the Seychelles, to the Sydney Echo, He has published in book form, "Balladeadro and Mamba" (Dwight: Melbourne), and "The Man in the Iron Mask," a poetical romance (George Robertson: Melbourne), also "A Rosebud from the Garden of the Taj," in the Melbourne Monthly Magazine.

M‘Culloch, Hon. Sir James, K.C.M.G., sometime Premier of Victoria, is the son of the late George M‘Culloch, of Glasgow, where he was born in 1819. Having embraced mercantile pursuits, he became in 1853 a partner in the firm of J. & A. Dennistoun, of Glasgow, and proceeded to Melbourne, where, in conjunction with Mr. Robert Sellar, he opened the house of Dennistoun Bros. & Co., in connection with the Glasgow firm, which had also branches in London, Liverpool, New York, and New Orleans. In 1862 the firm of Dennistoun Bros. & Co. of Melbourne was wound up, and Sir James (then Mr.) M‘Culloch founded a new firm in Melbourne in connection with that of Leishman, Inglis & Co., of London, with Mr. Robert Sellar as partner, under the style of M‘Culloch, Sellar & Co., of which firm he is still the senior member. In 1854 he became a nominee member of the old Legislative Council, and in 1856 he was elected to represent the Wimmera electorate in the first Legislative Assembly. In April of the following year he formed a Government, in which he took the portfolio of Minister of Trade and Customs, leaving the Premiership to the late Mr. Haines, with the office of Chief Secretary. Sir James retired with his colleagues in March 1858, and visited England; but having been re-elected to the Assembly on his return, he accepted the post of Treasurer in the Nicholson Administration, which lasted from Oct. 1859 to Nov. 1860. After another visit to England he was returned for Mornington

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