This short-sighted policy of the banning and barring of the married man is evident in many other branches of Australian industry besides that of agriculture; and only the other day I cut the following out of the _Sydney Bulletin_, which has a happy knack of putting its finger directly on the weak places in the administration of its country: “The old, old policy of baby-prohibition, this time from the Victorian Police Department:—‘Wardsman wanted at Police Hospital, Victoria Barracks, St. Kilda Road. Salary, £75 per year, with board. Applicants must be single, etc.’ It is a wonder the unfortunate baby ever contrives to get born at all, when one considers the number of awful bosses who fine the father in his whole salary if baby happens.” All this time I seem to have got very far away from my first subject of gardens, but it has been merely from a natural discursiveness of mind, and not from any lack of legitimate material, for, indeed, the paucity of interest to be found in the private gardens of Melbourne is amply balanced by the beauty and variety of the public ones; among which the Botanical Gardens must be accorded the first place, both in importance and size—covering, as they do, eighty-three acres—exquisitely situated, for the most part on either side of a deep valley, along the hollow of which runs a thick grove of moisture-loving palms. To the right of this, as one looks towards the city, is the Alexandria Avenue and the winding, silver ribbon of the Yarra, which is gradually being made as beautiful at close quarters as it now appears from the all-enhancing distance. Besides this deep valley, one elevation of which is topped by Government House, there is an infinitude of ups and downs, sweep after sweep of undulating greensward broken by many flower-beds and by jutting masses of trees, fringed with blossoms of every colour. It seems that anything will grow in Melbourne if only you water it enough—the old, old grievance again—and both subtropical plants and the hardiest English varieties flourish amicably side by side in the Botanical Gardens. Still, it is in the diversity of its trees rather than its plants that it really gains most over an English garden of the same sort, the shapes and colouring of the trunks, the almost human turn of the branches, the size and luxuriance of the leaves, proving an endless source of delight.