AUSTRALIAN NSW3.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 114, 16 January 1872, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN NSW3.

A Victorian sportsman recently shot 203 J quail in one day. ! A bountiful harvest is confidently anticipated in Tasmania. The Queensland Parliament lately sat for '2l hours at a stretch. The cost of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens is £OBOO per annum. Pleuro-pneumonia is spreading unchecked among the herds in Victoria. At Talbot the thermometer lately registered 350 degrees in the sun. A new and spacious theatre is to be erected in a central part of Sandhurst. A Victorian bushman has cured a snake bite by washing-it with soda-water. The quantity, of gold annually exported from Victoria is about 1,700,000 ounces. The Alfred memorial bells at Ballarat were rung on Christmas, day for the first time. Mr Anthony Trollope has been exploring the mines and the Chinese camp at Ballarat. Great bush fires, one of which burned for a week, have occurred near Moama, N.S.W. The transcontinental telegraph in Australia is being erected at the rate of 10 miles a day. The grasshoppers near Pleasant Creek lately passed in such numbers as to darken the air. The pigs in New South Wales are reported to have been attacked by a new species of j entozoon. • Angora goats have been successfully bred j near Albury. Their fleeces are worth about I 10s. each. At Echuca, on Clmstmas Day, a boy while j playing with a gun accidentally shot another boy dead. Of six petitions for divorce heard in Melbourne in one day lately, five were by the husbands. The Victorian papers teem with paragraphs regarding suicides, sudden deaths, and fires. I A man named Vertelli crossed Sydney ] harbour on Boxing Day in a tub drawn by; four geese. At Grafton, N.S.W., a girl sixteen years of age hanged herself with a rope fastened to a rafter. A young harvest labourer in Victoria has died from drinking cold milk and water while heated. 49,000 persons travelled by the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway on Christmas and Boxing Days. An aerolite, resembling a huge ball of fire, followed by a train of smoke, burst near Queanbeyan lately. One of the Sydney University eleven had a tooth knocked out by the ball while practising the other day. The Colony of Victoria pays between £7OOO and £BOOO annually to keep the squatters' sheep free from scab. In the case of a boy killed by lightning in j New South Wales, the hair was burned off : the back of his head. Diphtheria, fever, and sunstroke have been making havoc among the juvenile population at Bendigo. Large pieces of ice, many of them as big as j an iron bucket, fell during a recent storm in ! the Queanbeyan district. Harvest hands are badly wanted in several I districts of Victoria. As much as £3 a-week I and board has been paid. , The New South Wales Gold Commissioners | report that the Gulgong gold-field will probably be worked out in a year. The settlers in northern Queensland propose to separate from Queensland and form j a new colony, to be named Capricornia. A Fijian constable, who escorted Rosenwax to Melbourne, ha 3 been distinguishing j himself by swimming and diving feats. The duok-shaoters at the Malmsbury Rcscr- | voir on Christmas Day are said to have been i nearly as numerous as the ducks. At Sydney, Judge Hargrave has decided that a will written in pencil is valid, if in i other respects genuine and piopcrly attested. The Craigie (Victoria) Town Council had a j lively meeting the other day, winch culmii nated in a scrimmage, in which the Mayor had an ear torn, and a councillor a shoalder ! dislocated. An act of remarkable boyish courage, says : the Argus of 10th December was performed , on Wednesday last, which deserves something more than common mention. Tiie hero was a child about nine years of ago, the son of I Mr W. 11. Smith, of the Treasury, and the i scene of the exploit the River Yarva, below his father's home at Abbotsford. It appears that Mrs Smith's attention was suddenly ex--1 cited by cries of alarm from the opposite bank i of the river, raised by a gentleman who witj nesscd the occurrence, and upon running i down the garden to the margin of the 1 she discovered to her horror that her youngest ! child, some 18 months old, had fallen into ithe water, and was drifting rapidly away | with the strong current, little more* than a J tiny arm being visible above the surface. | An elder boy, Charlie, the youth first referred , to, and who is just learning to swim, had ( also fortunately heard the alarm, and accompanied his mother. Without an instant's ! hesitation this plucky little fellow throw 1 aside his clothes, and sprang in boldly to the I aid of his baby brother. Reaching him, he I managed, by dint of desperate paddling and I struggling, to keep himself and his little bnr- ■ den afloat, until a semi-submerged snag ! caught and providentially arrested their progress. Here ho held on, and an inward turn of the current having by this time swept j them somewhat nearer the bank, the mother ; was enabled, by wading in herself waist deep, !to catch her brave boy by the hand, and j draw him and the other little one into safety. . Few ntori noteworthy deeds of rontMtil heroism are, we tlvnk, on record,