with wine biscuits equal to Lemaun, of Threadneedle Street, London." This "Phil" distinguished himself in other more questionable ways, for he turned into a professional billiard player and marker, took occasionally to the stage, and was the first to sing to a public audience, the Cockney doggerel, misnamed an Irish comic song, "Paddy's Wedding." T h e first issue of Kerr's Melbourne Almanac and Port Phillip Directory, in January, 1841, contains a cloud of advertisements, indicative of a marked improvement in the trading habits of the community. In it are to be found the commercial notices of most of the early merchants such as Ashurt and Co., W . and H . Barnes, O. Williams, W . Westgarth, J. Cropper and Co., J. Bullen, Worsley and Forest, Campbell and Woolley, Heape and Grice, Hunter, Somervail and Co., J. B. Were, Thomas, Enscoe, and James, F. Pittman, P. W . Welsh and Co., Langhorne Bros., & c , & c D. H . Ley appears as thefirstadvertised gold and silversmith, working jeweller, and watch and clockmaker. H e professed to be stocked with a splendid variety of London-made jewellery, chains, seals, and watches, by the most celebrated manufacturers. H e was ready to repair and rate chronometers, and make Masonic jewels to order. H . G. Harrington had succeeded R o w e and Co. in the apothecary's shop next the Club House. His stock in-trade went far outside the pharmacopoeia, for he vended with his medicines innumerable trifles such as English honey and West India tamarinds, Tomlin snuffs and boxes, lucifers, Promethean and magic lights, pickles, jams, and marmalades, preserved meats and high dried sprats, lemon syrup and raspberry vinegar, table and pudding raisins, Indian currie powder, and wine-glasses and tumblers. R. Wilson and Co., chemists and druggists, are advertised at the corner of Collins and Queen Streets, where they had, at very great expense,fittedup a sodawater machine and fountain, from which the public could be supplied with most delicious beverages, viz., sodawater, effervescing lemonade, and raspberryade, either in draught or in bottle, A wholesale and retail draper, silk mercer, and haberdasher (W. Empson), appeared in Collins Street, with every description of drapery and fancy goods of the newest style, sprinkled with such useful commodities as Tuscan and Dunstable bonnets, Wellington boots, sheets, pillow-cases, and table-cloths, and only stopping at stretchers and mattresses of every kind. T h e tobacco, snuff, and cigar business soon spread, and, amongst others of lesser note, James Dick, junior, Collins Street, offered weeds of various brands, with 'Paddy's plain and fancy snuffs, real Planchadoes, • superior Young Queen, Havannah, and Chinsurah cigars, plain and fancy pipes, &c. But in August, 1842, Miss Jane Browne m a d e a further advance by opening a cigar divan, coffee and reading-room, in Elizabeth Street. Intending patronisers were assured that it was a place " combining every convenience for the enjoyment of smokers, as well as of those w h o love to cull the flower of literature while sipping ' the cup which cheers but not inebriates.'" T h efloristsappeared in 1841, when Daniel Bunce was prepared to sell packages of seeds and specimens of indigenous plants, m a d e up for exportation, at one guinea each. H e was also open to "lay out and stock gardens and pleasure-grounds, and had fruit and forest trees and seeds of all kinds." H e was outbid in public favour by Francis S. Dutton, of Collins Street, announcing " receipt of, direct from the celebratedflorists,Avan, Eaden and Son, Harlem, and Cornelius Stegenhock, of Nordyk, a large assortment of the choicest roots of tulips, hyacinths, jonquils, anemones, ranunculus and narcissus, ever imported." But Bunce for many years continued to be regarded as the professional horticulturist of the district. H e accompanied the explorer Leichardt on one of his North Australian expeditions, and he finally obtained the Curatorship of the Geelong Botanical Gardens, where he died some years ago. There was not m u c h newspaper puffing amongst the Melbourne butchers, w h o probably spent all their " blowing " energies in preparing their meat for the market; but one queer old fellow of them so believed in the magic of type, that he occasionally issued notices of a somewhat original make-up. H e was the A d a m Murphy already named, and he changed from lime-selling to the block and cleaver, at which he did not prosper, and subsequently resorted to half-a-dozen other means of obtaining a crust. In 1841 his butchery was in Bourke Street, near Swanston Street, where he professed to "retail roasts, steaks and chops, at 20 per cent, below rate." A s a sample of his m o d e of advertising, I transcribe
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THE CHRONICLES OF EARLY MELBOURNE.
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