These features form an interesting retrospect of early Melbourne. They have nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town and population. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroo sporting over the site of Melbourne--a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled almost at once with the first colonizing inroad. I have spoken of the little bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those earlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra close to Melbourne, but which has taken its departure to far distances many a year ago. The gorgeous black cockatoo was another of our early company, now also long since departed. For a very few years after my arrival they still hovered about Melbourne, and I recollect gazing in admiration at a cluster of six of them perched upon a large gum-tree near the town, upon the Flemington-road. The platypus, also, was quite plentiful, especially in the Merri Creek. Visiting, about 1843, my friend Dr. Drummond, who had a house and garden at the nearest angle of the creek, about two miles from town, we adjourned to a "waterhole" at the foot of the garden, on the chance of seeing a platypus, and sure enough, after a very few minutes, one rose before us in the middle of the pool. THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN. "Oh I see the monstrousness of man When he looks out in an ungrateful shape." --Timon of Athens. The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, and for a couple of years or so after; but they were prohibited about the time of the institution of the corporation, as their non-conformity in attire--to speak in a decent way--their temptations from offers of drink by thoughtless colonists, and their inveterate begging, began soon to make them a public nuisance. But aboriginal ways did not die at once. The virtues or integrity of native life, as Strzelecki would phrase it, struggled and survived for some few further years the strong upsetting tide of colonial life.