Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/174

 colony, and also to that of South Australia, whose marvellous success as an agricultural and horticultural country, has been placed, beyond all cavil, by the industry and wisdom of her inhabitants. The Prospectus referred to states:—

"The climate of Australia offers every promise of rich results in the propagation of those productions which reward the cultivators of the soil in corresponding latitudes, and other parts, in both hemispheres. There is nought obtained on either side of the fruitful shores of the Mediterranean, which, within the range from Port Philip to Port Curtis, cannot be brought to perfection, and yield a bounteous harvest. Medicinal plants and herbs, many of which are indigenous to the soil, and for which Great Britain is wholly dependent on the Levant and Asia Minor, can be cultivated with facility, and afford a large profit. The dye-woods of the Australian continent and adjacent islands are various; and there is no vegetable dye used in any kind of manufacture, or wool of more fine quality, that are not produced within our territorial limits. We also possess the finest sand, and the best adapted for the manufacture of all kinds of glass, in the world; and when it is known that the exports of our wines must, to yield their due value, be put in bottles for the spirit, necessarily, to prevent their fermentation in wood—for export destroys the peculiar flavour of the genuine grape wine of the colony—it cannot be doubted that it is the interest of the vine-growers to forward the establishment of glass manufactories,