27 November 1872

Next day we presented our letters to the Hon H Parkes, Colonial Treasurer and the Hon. Butler, Attorney General, and others in high office. In the afternoon at the Botanical Gardens, we saw many of our page 111 hot house plants growing in the open most luxuriantly. There is something peculiar in the climate which prevents the arrangements of flowers such as we can command in our Gardens. The atmosphere is dry for so long that even the Colens is obliged to be sheltered under grass. We fell in to-day with our old friends of H.M.S. Blanche, who had been 3 months cruising in the South Sea Islands.