Where The Bats Have Hung Their Hat

             The Royal Melbourne Botanic Garden (RMBG) was established in the 1840's, just six years after Melbourne was founded. Its century-old trees were once famous for lining lakes and grasslands, acting as a magnificent sanctuary in the midst of a busy city, for all to enjoy. Today, the gardens are more likely to resemble the front cover of a horror novel. The eerie atmosphere and unsightly views are due to the large colonies of bats that have nested high in the canopies of trees, causing detrimental and perhaps fatal effects on the gardens. According to newspapers "The Age" and "Herald Sun", the issue has become a controversial debate, with the RMBG management trying desperately to preserve their gardens, and animal rights lobbyists' persistently knocking their door in an effort to save the lives of the pests that have ruined an important part of Australia's heritage.
             The RMBG was founded by a man by the name of Charles Joseph La Trobe, an English professor and explorer who evidently had a fondness for Australian botany. Rumor has it that in the 18th and 19th centuries, natural history was the new science of the world. Dimity Reed, author of "Cull the bats or kill the Botanic Gardens", gives an exposition of how La Trobe's passion for natural history was reflected in the displaying of new plants in the botanic gardens, how the RMBG were established to advance this knowledge, and how they remain today as a collection for both scientific and reference purposes. Reed's research also outlines how the gardens safeguard rare and threatened flora as the basis for investigating evolutionary relationships and the ecology of Australian plants. But, to Victorians like myself, the gardens' role in science is little thought about as families stroll or picnic, or as children tumble down the hills, feed the swans or collect tadpoles in jam jars. We see the RMBG as a free source...

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Where The Bats Have Hung Their Hat. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 07:53, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/89985.html