of water. About an hour's walk from Anderson's Bay, there is, right on the top of the hill at the righthand side of the road, an immense block of stone, the “Big Stone,” from the flat top of which a magnificent view is had, worth all the labour of getting there. Then there are the various quarries in the neighbourhood of Caversham, in which fossil shells and sharks' teeth are occasionally found. Farther off is the grand section of the sandstone rock exhibited in the line of cliffs which bound the coast near Green Island, the cliffs themselves bounded in turn by the noble promontory of Green Island Peninsula, which shows, in a most beautiful way, the varied phenomena of basaltic pillars. In the same neighbourhood are the coal pits, and a little further out is the quartz reef at Christie's. Beyond Anderson's Bay is Lawyer's Head, with a fine cave under its northern face, and at Tomahawk Bluff there are several others, all of which can be visited at low water. The Green Island cliffs also boast of a cave; and on the estate of Lauriston, near Saddle Hill, there is a singular cave, in which a large number of moa bones were found some year or two ago. Underneath the trap rock of Bell Hill there is a bed of sand, which also underlies that bold rock face at the southern end of Princes-street, passing through to the Glen road. At the head of Pelichet Bay there is an extensive bed of pipe-clay, and another which contains singular concretions of ironstone, as well as small masses of a bright white substance which turns blue on exposure to the air. At Kempshell's quarry, up the North-east Valley, beautiful specimens of dendritic iron and manganese are plentiful. There are places farther off, such as Whare Flat, the Heads, Portobello, Blue-skin, etc., which are well worthy of a visit. But, to be brief, I have surely said enough to show that a wide field exists in our neighbourhood for the study of geology; although, at the same time, it is to be regretted that there are few fossiliferous localities near town.

Turning, now, to botany. Perhaps there is not in all New Zealand a town so favourably situated for the study of this science as Dunedin. The immense tracts of forest which extend to the east and north are now intersected in every direction with tolerably good roads, so that the student has little difficulty in penetrating with his field book to almost any given point. Most of the members of the Institute are aware, through our late vice-president, Mr. Webb, that the collection of flowering plants in the museum is deficient in a good many species, so that here is a capital chance for the Field Naturalists to supply those desiderata. At the same time, I must, as a caution not to be over sanguine, say that it is no easy matter going into the bush with a list of wants in one's hands and expect to come out of it again with more than one, or, may be, half-a-dozen. It is possible to traverse the bush for hours and not find a single example of the plant wanted, and yet it may be almost stumbled over in the first few yards. In addition to the flowering plants wanted, there are

extensive families of plants which are totally unrepresented in the museum— I mean the mosses, lichens, etc. Some of these are very interesting, and nearly all are very beautiful, and will well repay the trouble of collection. There is one thing in connection with our bush which not only the botanist but every lover of nature must regret, and that is the rapid rate at which it is disappearing. A few short years and the only forest left will be patches here and there in inaccessible places, where it would not pay to remove the trees. It is an interesting subject for speculation, too, as to what influence this clearing away of the forest may have on the climate of the country.

It is rather singular that here we have no native mammals to look for. In various places, rabbits, rats, and mice, and their natural enemy the cat, are not unfrequent; but for the aboriginal rodent, the Kiore, we may now look in vain. In the early day of the gold rush, they were not uncommon in the interior, and used to be caught and eaten by the diggers under the name of Maori rabbits; and if any yet exist, it can only be in the far away mountainous country of the south-west. The only mammals now to be found are marine—seals, porpoises, etc. Two species of seal are represented in the museum, specimens having been beautifully mounted by Mr. Purdie; but a couple of porpoises would be a decided acquisition, and now that whale fishing is revived on the coast, the skeleton of one of the smaller sorts would be valuable as a type of the rest. While I am on this head I may here allude to one of the most patent wants of the museum—neither the Crustacea, nor the Mollusca have a place there. There are a few shells—a Pinna, a Turbo, and Haliotis, and there is a small collection made by Dr. Buchanan, I think at Lyell's Bay, Wellington. Crustaceans abound on our coast. From the active and predatory crayfish down to a minute shrimp, there are many that sport a long tail; while the short-tailed ones, from a large solitary-living spider crab down to a little mite of a thing, no bigger than a pea, are abundant everywhere. The edible crab—the partan—so large and plentiful in the old country, is represented here by a little tasteless thing about three inches by two, but of precisely the same colour and habits. With regard to the Mollusca, the shells are neither so remarkable in colour or form as those found on the islands to the north; but nevertheless there are many beautiful species, and a collection for the museum should form one of our earliest attempts. It is a pity that there is always so much surf breaking on our shores, as by this means many of the finest shells are seldom got whole, being pounded to pieces in coming ashore. Still, after a storm, and the heavier the better, when there is a lot of kelp thrown up, there are always a few of the deep water shells to be got among the roots. There are also a few in the fresh waters of the district, and a rather fine lobster inhabits most of the streams. The museum contains only two specimens of Radiata—a sun-star and an echinus; there are many others to be got; while