Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria/Chapter 1

by Samuel Hannaford

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

reatly as a taste for Marine Zoology has been diffused by the numerous beautifully illustrated and charming books, which within the last few years have appeared from the English press, they are nearly all costly, and many of them of too technical a nature to prove of real value to the masses, who at the approach of the hot winds of Summer flock to the Sea-shore, and we pen these pages with the hope that the chatty form in which we have endeavoured to impart a few of the gleanings made during several years' rambling in the Colony, may take this Book into the hands of many, who, perhaps, having a lurking taste for the subject of which it treats, would be deterred from its perusal, were it of a more precise or scientific character.

"Great cities," remarks Professor Harvey, in the Preface to his splendid Work on the Seaweeds of our Coast, "are springing up in the Australian Colonies; and watering places, to which the citizen takes his family to enjoy the sea breeze during the summer time are coming into being," still, a residence at the Sea-side soon becomes very monotonous where the mind has not full occupation, but following out a few of the hints contained in the following pages, inducements will be found fog taking exercise in search of some of the many beautiful objects of the Sea-shore, and so all the functions, bodily and mental, may be maintained in a healthy state.

"Not lost the time in Sea-side ramble spent,
Braced is the frame, and mental health is gained."

With such glorious teachers as Gosse, Lewes, Harvey, and Rymer Jones, we have often preferred giving a vividly written passage from some one of their Works to anything of our own, and in the preparation of this Work have wished indeed "that some one more skilful had undertaken it, but still it is better even we should undertake it than it be left undone."^[1]

1. Cicero.