Bird, Hon. Bolton Stafford, Colonial Treasurer of Tasmania, was born near Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1840. He has been in the Australasian colonies since 1853, and in Tasmania since 1879. About twelve years of his life were spent as a minister of the Congregational Church. Soon after his arrival in Tasmania he resigned the charge of the Davey Street Congregational Church, Hobart, of which he was the minister, and betook himself to fruit-growing in the Huon district. He has taken an active part in the recent establishment of the fruit export trade to England. He has represented the Franklin district in the House of Assembly since 1882. In March 1887 he joined the Fysh Ministry as Colonial Treasurer. He was a member of the Commissions on Education and on Lunatic Asylums in 1883, and is a member of the Council of the University of Tasmania. Mr. Bird was one of the representatives of the colony at the third and fourth sessions of the Federal Council of Australasia, and at the Federation Conference at Melbourne in 1890, and the Sydney Federation Convention in 1891.
Birnie, Richard, second son of the late Sir Richard Birnie, Chief Metropolitan Police Magistrate at Bow Street, was born in London in 1808. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1830, and M.A. in 1837. He entered at the Inner Temple on Jan. 9th, 1828, and was called to the bar on May 7th, 1833. After practising in the Central Criminal Court Mr. Birnie was appointed by the Duke of Newcastle Advocate-General of Western Australia, in which colony he arrived in Jan. 1854. After holding this post for nearly six years he acted as judge for about a year. Arriving in 1859 in Melbourne, he was called to the Victorian bar on Oct. 13th in the same year. He was on several occasions employed as crown prosecutor in Victoria, but has been mainly known as a contributor of essays to the Australasian. His father, Sir Richard Birnie, was originally a saddler, but is chiefly known by his success in detecting and hunting down the "Cato Street" conspirators.
Black, Alexander, ex-Surveyor-General of Victoria, was born in Banffshire, educated in Aberdeen as a land surveyor, and emigrated to Victoria in 1852, where he arrived in December, and proceeded to the Castlemaine goldfield. He returned to Melbourne in 1853, and practised his profession. On April 18th, 1854, he was appointed Government Assistant-Surveyor, and Geodetic Surveyor in 1860, and in this capacity surveyed the boundary line between Victoria and New South Wales. Mr. Black became District Surveyor in 1871, Assistant Surveyor-General in 1878, and succeeded to his late position of Surveyor-General of Victoria on the retirement of Mr. Skene in 1886. Mr. Black was a member of the Board of Land and Works, a Commissioner of Land Tax, and Chairman of Parks and Gardens Committees until he retired in 1892.
Black, Maurice Hume, M.L.A., is a grand-nephew of the celebrated Joseph Hume, Member for Montrose in the British House of Commons. He was born in London on Dec. 15th, 1835, and married in 1861 a niece of the great statesman, George Canning. Having emigrated to Victoria in 1852, Mr. Black left the goldfields of that colony to try his luck in pastoral pursuits in South Australia, subsequently going to Riverina, and in 1864 to Queensland, where he still resides. He is the inventor of a steam sheep-washing process, and went into sugar planting in the Mackay district of Queensland in 1871. In 1881 he was returned to the Legislative Assembly for that electorate, for which he still sits. Having taken a prominent part in the agitation for the separation of Northern Queensland from the rest of the colony, and its formation into a distinct colony, he was in 1887 commissioned to go to England with Mr. Lissner to press the matter upon the attention of the Home Government, Mr. Harold Finch-Hatton and Dr. Ahearne having done much to bring the matter into the region of practical politics by their exertions during the previous year. Though not successful in inducing Lord Knutsford to take steps for the separation of Northern Queensland, the advanced phase which the question has since assumed is a good deal due to the efforts of the delegation of 1887. In June 1888, on the formation of the second McIlwraith Administration, Mr. Black became Secretary of Public Works, and continued to hold the post when five months later the Ministry was reconstructed under Mr. Morehead.
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