Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/20

 CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

as a taste for Marine Zoology has been diffused by the numerous beautifully illustrated and charming books, which within the last few years have appeared from the English press, they are nearly all costly, and many of them of too technical a nature to prove of real value to the masses, who at the approach of the hot winds of Summer flock to the Sea-shore, and we pen these pages with the hope that the chatty form in which we have endeavoured to impart a few of the gleanings made during several years' rambling in the Colony, may take this Book into the hands of many, who, perhaps, having a lurking taste for the subject of which it treats, would be deterred from its perusal, were it of a more precise or scientific character.

"Great cities," remarks Professor Harvey, in the Preface to his splendid Work on the Seaweeds of our Coast, "are springing up in the Australian Colonies; and watering places, to which the citizen takes his family to enjoy the sea breeze during the summer time are coming into being," still, a residence at the `