MISCELLANEOUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 299, 20 November 1874, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

A vessel named the Victory has arrived at Sydney after a passage of 145 days from Manila. ' Naturally enough everyone interested had given her up for lost. Such a passage is, we belieye, almost without parallel in these later days. - .. .

The present.] rices of rations at the principal camps at Paliiteryille, are as follows:—Flour three shillings per lb.; sugar, three shillings and sixpence per lb.; tea, seven shillings per lb.; salt, two shillings and sixpence per lb. ; jams, three shillings and sixpence per lb. tin ; portatoes, fout shillings per lb.; rice, three shillings and sixpence per lb.; and blucher boots, which cost five' shillings in Brisbane or Sydney, are thirty to thirtyfive shillings per pair. After the afternoon service at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, on August 23, a gentleman waited upon Mr. Spurgeon and handed him a cheque of £IO,OOO, with the request that the money should be : equally divided between the Orphanage and the students' College, both of which are in connection, with the Tabernacle. The gift was a legacy which had been left by a gentleman who had attended the Tabernacle but for a very short period. In Mr. Fergusson's garden on Athelstane Range, Queensland, may be seen a curiosity in the form of a young cocoanut tree in full bearing. ' There are, in fact, on the tree some thirty cocoanuts some of them larger than a man's fist. The tree is about seven or eight years old, and Polynesians who have seen it, pronounce it a very fine tree for its age. The cocoanut will certainly thrive here, and we are glad that attention is being turned to its cultivation, one gentleman having just purchased fifty' of the nuts for planting We hope others may follow in his lead, as Mr. Hart, .of East street; has just obtained a supply from the South Sea Islands, many of which, he states, are in excellent condition for planting.—' Rockhampton Bulletin.'