superseded by the appointment of a resident medical superintendent.
The reserve at Look-out Point, which, as already stated, was the first position determined upon for a permanent Lunatic Asylum, having been given over to the Industrial School, the Government had to cast about for some other suitable place. It was no doubt desired that the Asylum should be within easy reach of the city, but to that the high price to which land had attained was a bar. A better site for a home for the insane can scarcely be conceived of than the high table-land in the Waikari district overlooking the city, bay, and ocean beach. But the existence of the reserve at Seacliff settled the matter, and, of that reserve 500 acres were allotted to the Asylum, and the remaining 400 set apart for the Industrial School and an intended Reformatory, the latter on the lines of the Redhill institution, near Birmingham, founded by the brothers George and Charles Sturge, of the Society of Friends. As, however, the removal of the Industrial School to a place so far distant from Dunedin has been strongly opposed by an influential section of the citizens, and as with the growth of the colony the inmates of the Asylum are bound to still further increase in number, it is not at all improbable that the whole of the 900 acres will eventually fall to the institution now on the ground.
When the Seacliff Reserve was decided upon as the site of the permanent Asylum, a working party of fourteen men was sent out in August, 1878, to prepare the way. They were located in a house quickly run up on a knoll at the south-east corner of the Reserve. Shortly after beginning operations they came upon the remains of a large Moa, which were handed over to Professor Hutton, then in charge of the Museum. The main trunk railway line running past Seacliff was not then opened, and the Reserve was a dense, trackless forest. In this connection mention may be made of an amusing incident. One day, before a break had been made in the bush, Mr. Hume and Mr. Alexander Cairns, who had been appointed Inspector of Works, visited Seacliff to examine the ground, with the view of forming a general idea as to suitable positions for the several buildings. The desirability of possessing themselves of a pocket compass, however, did not
