AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Evening Star, Issue 2812, 22 February 1872, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Ihe approaching inter-colonial cricket match b6twedii Sydney and Victoria will be a'very keen one. The Welsh team is a particularly strong one, as may be inferred from the fact that they intend to leave out such players as Lawrence, Gilbert, Park, and Hewitt, the top scorers of last year. There vVill L>fe the three Gregorios, Faithful, Coates, Locker, Banherman, and Hands —an old Bug by hoy, of whose cricketing performances the Sydney papers speak highly. Victoria has a list of 35 players to choose from. A Mrs Dickens, of Melbourne, has made herself famous by discovering a remedy for cases of severe burning or scalding, and, like a true philantrophist, has hastened to present it to the world. She has written to the committee of the Melbourne Hospital, informing them that an infallible remedy for such esases was to envelope the patient in common table salt, keepin it on for several fyoiirs after pain has ceased to be felt, lest the skin should peel off. Why, the fate of Lot’s wife would he happiness compared to this mode of “pickling” human bodies. Mrs Dickens quietly observed in her letter, “ All pain will cease to be felt after two or three hours of this treatment.” We should think so. . . , Some of the quart/ c aims m Victoria and New South Wales arc giving extraordinary yields. At Majorca, the Gladstone Company had a yield of 385 ounces from SO tons of stone; and at stuff from Paxton’s chum yielded 1700 ounces of gold.

Tasmania has been blithe and gay with racing, and a champion regatta ; but all the time there was a skeleton in the closet, which is now frightening half the people in that colony out of their wits. Ihe Launces on ami Do'craino railway won’t pay to cany on the traffic, and the traffic can’t be stopped. It may have the curious (fleet (for a railway line) of actually depopulating the district through which itrnns, the position being this : There is a special railway rate on the lands through which the line runs, amounting to 3s 4d in the £, above and hide) cadent of ordinary taxation. The traffic is carried on at a loss of .a LIOO a week. If the trains stop the income from the special rate ceases ; if carried on there will soon be nobody left either to pay the rate, travel on the line, or transmit produce over it.