In another was Dr. Hobson,
whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society, unable to
spare such lives. He was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen,
and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange, and
then but scantily known, Australian fauna, from the platypus, at the
head of modern wonders, back to the earliest marsupialdom of the fossil
world.
The Reverend Alexander Morison's Independent Church and adjacent manse
came next. The Scots Church, lower down, of which the Reverend James
Forbes was minister, was then being built. Not till the next year was
the creditably large Mechanics' Institute begun. A good story is told of
it, characteristic of the earlier flourish of the times. Mr. P.W. Welsh,
then the leading merchant, had offered to subscribe so largely that the
committee took offence at such vain presumption, and limited
subscriptions to more modest sums.
Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a small
nest of early merchants--E.M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eight
years later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, the
well-known Mr. Jonathan Binns Were, was always, under all fortunes, a
prominent and influential merchant and citizen; W.
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