the main building; but it was from the first intended that his residence should be on the knoll at the south-east corner of the estate, on which stood the small house erected by the first working party sent out.
For a time a good deal of anxiety was occasioned by the shifting of a portion of the northern end of the building, caused by the moveable nature of the ground. The faulty portion, however, has lately been taken down and re-erected of lighter material, and it is believed all danger of further damage is now at an end.
As already stated, the upper building first erected was intended to be the farm steading, while the second one put up by the patients was meant for temporary use. But they still serve as dormitories, the steading being now on another and more easily accessible part of the ground. Among other recent additions is a well-advanced handsome block of workshops, formed of bluestone, and which will do away with the frail shedlike structures that have for a number of years done duty.
While the institution at Seacliff is understood to be the asylum for the insane within the Otago and Southland districts, among its 500 inmates are patients from northern asylums, parties having on two or three occasions been sent south to relieve the over-crowded condition of these lesser asylums. In respect of their insane, Otago and Southland are no doubt on a par with other parts of New Zealand. But there seems to be an impression, at least among some of the public, that the number of the insane in the colony, as compared with the same unfortunate class in the Home Country, is unduly large. As a matter of fact, in proportion to the population, and as gauged by the number of inmates of our asylums, insanity in New Zealand is less prevalent than in the Home Country. While that in itself speaks well for the colony, the fact already alluded to must be borne in mind—viz., that many of our asylum inmates, though sane when they arrived in the colony, were, from their mental calibre, unfitted for colonial life—men and women who, if they had remained in their homes and with their friends, and continued in their easy-going mode of life, with all its old familiar surroundings, might (and in most instances at least would) have got on well enough in a way; but landing here among strangers
