Obituaries Australia

Died also, on Sunday last, Mr. Thomas Shepherd, of the Darling Nursery, leaving a wife and four children to deplore his loss. Mr. Shepherd was born of reputable parents in Fife in Scotland, and was bred to the humble profession of a working gardener. Like many of his countrymen, especially of that profession, he emigrated to London, with the hope of bettering his fortune, about the commencement of the present century; and by dint of persevering industry, conjoined with inflexible integrity and an irreproachable moral character, he succeeded in establishing himself in a highly respectable situation as a nursery gardener at Worthing in Kent, and at Hackney, near London. During the Joint-Stock Company mania of 1825, a company was formed in London under the designation of the New Zealand Company, for the cultivation, exportation, and manufacture of the produce of that island; of which, Mr. Shepherd was selected the president superintendent. Finding, however, on his arrival in New Zealand, with the Company's establishment, that the prospects of realizing a larger revenue for his constituents were by no means adequate to their expectations, he wisely recommended the abolition of the Company, and came to New South Wales with his family when the Company's property was disposed of on behalf of the proprietors. Shortly after his arrival in the Colony, Mr. Shepherd obtained a grant of land from His Excellency General Darling, adjoining Black Wattle Swamp, for the formation of a nursery garden; and it was doubtless the excessive fatigue he underwent for a long period in the accomplishment of his object that undermined his constitution, and rendered him unable to withstand the attacks of acute disease.

Mr. Shepherd died of the effects of a cold, which he had caught a few months ago, in preparing lectures for the Mechanic's Institution. From his general ability and his zealous and successful efforts in the department of Horticulture, his death is undoubtedly a serious loss to the colony.