Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/25

6 absence observed marked improvements, thanks to the Local Powers, (the Road Board, and the Municipality,) good roads, Government buildings, a Light-house, Obelisks to serve as land-marks, and a tramway to the Jetty, all proving the importance, from the large agricultural population surrounding it, of this little town. There are now too several respectable hostelries, where but a few years since there was only one, and the visitor will find comfort in any of them.

We have an intense horror of being idle, so adopting the advice of Goethe not to—

We call upon, and capture a Correspondent on Natural History topics, whose zeal in scientific pursuits we had long been aware of. Greetings interchanged, for Naturalists require no formal introduction, we started with the intention of exploring the rock-pools westward of the town. Arrived at our hunting ground after crossing the Merri River, noticing as we climbed the hill a species of the rush-like Xerotes in flower, we found the sea far too rough, and the sky too unpropitious to allow of our peering into the haunts of such creatures as we are in search of; yet nothing daunted we recross in our frail punt, bottling by the way a pretty species of a Diatom, (a Gomphonema), which fringed its sides, and away by the beach towards the Hopkins, to see what might turn up, since we verily believe with Wilmot, whose delightful "Summer Time in the Country," we would wish was more generally known, that "open eyes are always learning,—a garden, a wood, even a pool of