LATEST AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1947, 2 August 1869, Page 3

LATEST AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

The case of the convict Bitson was taken into consideration at the meeting of the Exceptive Council held yesterday, and after mature deliberation it was resolved that the sentence passed upon him .'•honld be carried into effect. He will therefore be executed on Tuesday next, the 3rd of August The decision was made known to him at five o’clock yesterday, but he evinced but comparatively little concern at it. He still remains very attentive to the ministrations of his spiritual instructors, and -we learn that neither they nor the officers of the gaol, who have attentively watched him, entertain the slightest doubts as to his sanity. Australia appears likely to trouble the world with an embarras de richesse. Meat, wool, corn, wine, gold, diamonds, and now pearls ! Some of tne latter of the most magnificent character have been left in charge of Dr Bleasdale by their discoverer, the owner of the schooner Huon. They were found in the neighborhood of Nicoll B.iy in North-west Australia, and there is good reason to believe that there are plenty more of these exquisite jewels where these were d’seovered. For some time past on this part of the coast a profitable search for pearl shells has been carried on, and trade with England opened out. The pearl shell is used for inlaying paper macM articles, and realises a high price j but the pearls now discovered are of the rarest description, one of them being of surpassing beauty, and it is said of two or three hundred pounds value in Melbourne. It is about the size of a large pea, perfectly circular, and of admirable color.

A correspondent acquaints ns with a case in which an absconding defaulter was stopped in his flight, through the agency of Mr Otto Berliner. “In the m< nth of February last,” he says, “ a storekeeper on the West Coast, New Zealand, indebted to myself and others in Melbourne in the sum of some LI2OO, left his business in the charge of his assistant, stating he was going to Melbourne to make purchases in the usual way. It was, however, soon discovered that he had taken flight and left the Colony, taking a passage in a wool ship from Lyttelton for the old country, with a large sum of money in bis possession. On receipt of this information I at once applied to Mi U. Berliner, who t ok the necessary steps through his London agent for securing the delinquent. All requisite papers were sent by the following mail, and I am happy to add the person and money of th absconder were secured, much to his annoyance.”

The velocipede mania in America has, according to advices received by the mail, gone far a-head of anything that has yet been imagined here, or apparently even in Europe. One firm in New York is said to turn out two thousand bicycles on the average per week, whilst other firms manufacture them on a large scale. Many hundreds of these are made to order for western cities. As a matter of course, improvements of every kind are continually made until the latter article is considered a great advance upon its predecessor of the preceding week. London Funch has conceived the idea of it coming to a young lady on a velocipede, followed by a footman on another; but the Americans Lave actually turned out hundreds of machines on two wheels so contrived as to carry both lady and gentleman. These latest inventions are called she ‘ 5 Beuu and Girl of the Period Velocipede,” and are similar to the best bicycles lately exhibited in Melbourne, with the addition of a crank on the second wheel, and a small sidesaddle projecting over it. On the latter the yo"ng lady sits, and assists in the propulsion, whilst the gentleman drives and manages the front wheel in the same manner as is done with the tryciclos in use at present in Melbourne,