AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 50, 6 January 1872, Page 2

AUSTRALIA.

The “ Age” expects lawyers soon to become os plentiful in Victoria as ar« colonels and captains in the United States. The Melbourne University Council have refused to allow ladies who have passed the matriculation examination to attend the lectures. The falling off in the wool clip of Tasmania last year was nearly a million and a half pounds weight, owing chiefly to the enormous increase of rabbits. The shareholders of the Warrnambool Meat Preserving Company have resolved to wind up the concern. At Geelong a Mrs Williams, who was staying in a hotel there, fell through the floor of one of the rooms into a jewellers shop below. Things in Tasmania are in such a depressed state that the very thieves are reported to be leaving the colony. Several more deaths both of men and animals, by lightning, have occurred in Victoria. The Sunday train question is now agitating the minds of the Victorian public. The Victorian Government are going to import from home a supply of rifles and ammunition of the latest approved pattern for the use of the volunteers. The Bendigo Water Works ore about to passintothe hands of the City Council of Sandhurst. At the last licensing meeting at Geelong not a single grocer applied fer the renewal of his bottle license. A Geelong solicitor, named Maley, having been convicted of forgery, has been struck off the rolls. A mining company at Abergeldy washed up theother day, the grand result being 3oz 4dwt of gold. Victoria boasts of one teetotal publican. He keeps a publichouse near the County Court, Melbourne. Fruit is very cheap in Victoria this season, and vegetables are being sold for “ next to nothing.” A Sydney paper urges that China is a more promising market for preserved meat than England. A sheep, 18 months old, shorn at Moorak, S.A., yielded a “ beautifully silky” fleece, weighing 231bs. It was not shorn as a lamb. Small insolvencies have been very numerous in Sydney of late. A number of vessels, employing between 200 and 300 men, are engaged in pearl fishing in Torres Straits. One had on hoard £7OOO worth of leche de mer alone. During the 14 years that responsible Government has existed in South Australia, the average annual cost to the colony for elections has been £4547. Thistles are so plentiful in Victoria just now that the roads are everywhere nearly blocked lip by them. The thermometer registered 116 degrees in the shade at Greenfell, N.S.W. A co-operative company for the manufacture and export of butter is being formed at Ivyneton. Ihe capital is £IOOO, in £1 shares. Caterpillars are ravaging some districts of Tasmania. A policeman was taken ill the other day in the Sydney Police Court, and died the same evening.

The weather in South Australia is warm and favorable for the harvest operations. The German Turn Verein in Melbourne have erected a fine new hall, built of bluestone. Canon Stephen, of Sydnej', has retired from his clerical duties, owing to ill-health. The new lunatic asylum at Kew, Melbourne, is now out of the builder’s hands. Its total cost will be about £150,000. A wild man is reported to have been seen in the Jingera Ranges, N.S.W. A hare, half devoured, has been found in a hawk’s nest, near Batesford, Victoria. The much-dreaded vine disease has appeared in the neighborhood of Melbourne, which has hitherto been exempt from its attacks. A mild form of the foot and-moutli disease has appeared among some cattle recently landed at Sydney from England. At Albury, N.S.W., a man was fined £5, with the alternative of two months’ imprisonment in default, “ for using disgracefully insulting language about her Majesty the Queen.” Large numbers of pilchards have made their appearance in Hobson’s Buy-. A little girl has been burned to death at Hotspur, Victoria, by the explosion of a kerosene tin. Her sister caused the explosion by putting a light to the spigot to find out how far the tin was from being full. A concert in aid of the funds of the Orphan Asylum was given in the Melbourne Town Hall on the lltli inst by nearly 1000 children from various public schools in the city and suburbs, and proved a success. At Pleasant Creek a miner put his lighted pipe into one of his pockets, which was full of gun-cotton. An explosion ensued, by which he was seriously injured. The Presbyterian Sunday School teachers in Melbourne ha\e resolved to present Captain Fraser, of the mission schooner Dayspring, with a purse of sovereigns. A drunken tailor was nearly drowned in a gutter in Elizabeth-street, Melbourne, during a recent thunderstorm. The New Guinea prospecting expedition was to leave Sydney on the 20th inst. The Government declined to subsidise it. £450 has been subscribed in. Sydney towards the Bishop Patteson memorial fund. “An Old Stonebreaker,” writing to a Melbourne paper, says that he, with hundreds of others, was attracted to Victoria from New Zealand by the reports of the extensive railway works in progress in the former colony. The revenue derived from tolls in Victoria is about £95,800 per annum. The South Melbourne Gas Company, now being formed, will supply gas at a maximum price of 9s per 1000 cubic feet. A company is to be formed in Melbourne to build a new opera house, the plans for which are already prepared, and are said to be “ truly magnificent.” For kicking a policeman and sitting on his hat, a Melbourne rough was fined £2O, with the alternative of three months’ imprisonment. A double pig has been born at Bet, Bet, Victoria. Six Chinese converts have been received into the Episcopalian Church at Percydale. The salary of the Mayor of Adelaide has been fixed at £3OO per annum. A new paper, entitled the Irish Citizen, has made its appearance in Sydney. The receipts on the Government railway lines in New South Wales are increasing very largely. A Chinaman has been fined £2 2s and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment for assaulting with a tomahawk the chief officer of the brigantine Belle, which recently arrived at Melbourne from Dunedin. Hobart Town is suffering from a plague of anonymous letters of a villainous character. At Waranga a man dislocated his shoulder in trying to drive an ant off his back. Strawberries have been selling at 3d per lb in Melbourne. A sparrow club lias been formed at Camberwell.

A female magician has been performing at Newcastle. The hairless horse has been on exhibition in Sydney. He lias been christened “ Caoutchouc.” The Victorian United Bootmakers’ Society, which has only been in existence a few weeks, has nearly 200 members. A composition for reducing the heat of buildings has been invented in Melbourne. It resembles white paint. On the Southern and Western Railway line, Queensland, which is of 3ft 9in gauge, not a single accident to life or limb has occurred since it was opened, four years ago. Victoria has 58,506 miners, of whom 43,359 are Europeans, and 15,147 Chinese. Of the former, .27,02(5 are engaged in alluvial, and 16,333 in quartz mining. Only 89 of the Chinese are quartz miners. The total value of the mining plant in the colony is £2,097,089. The steamer Hero, on her last voyage from Melbourne to Sydney, struck a large sun fish off Wollongong. It was necessary to stop the engines to enable the ship to get clear of the fish. A correspondent of the Hobart Town Mercury writes :—“ I was told by an Irish gentleman who has recently travelled through a great portion of the Huon that he believed that Ireland in her worst days never witnessed such distress as he saw iu many places of his journey.” A laughable scene took place in the Melbourne Police Court the other day. Ah Young, an old Chinese offender, was sent to gaol for twelve months as a vagrant, whereupon he began to cry and shout “ No good,” refusing to leave the dock. Constable Walsh seized him by the pig-tail and the seat of the breeches and lifted him bodily out. A shipment of New’ South Wales paper fibre and half stuff is about to be made from Sydney to London. The “ Coleraine Albion” reports the particulars of a case of wholesale woolstealing, by which Mr Frank Henty was robbed of some 600 or 700 fleeces, worth £2OO. The robbery was conducted in a very systematic manner by a woolsorter named Stone, aided by a farmer named Walker. Both of these men were arrested. The wool was shipped to Melbourne. If brevity really is the soul of wit, three speeches delivered at the Kyneton General Sessions yesterday (states the “ Guardian” of the 6th December) must be classed as amongst the wittiest on record. The evidence having been concluded in the prosecution of Henry Hines, for larceny, the public were treated to the following specimens of forensic eloquence ; —Mr o‘Loughlen (Crown Prosecutor): “I shan’t address the jury Mr W. 11. Brvne (counsel for the prisoner : “ I don’t intend to make a speech;” His Honor the Judge (summing up): “Gentleman, the^ case is entirely in your hands.” The jury emulated the promptness of counsel and judge, and acquitted the prisoner without hesitation. The “ Hobart Town Mercury” notices that the obsolute privilege of a member of Parliament was exercised on Friday. The member for East Devon read an extract from an article in the “ Mercury” of the previous day in not very complimentary terms to that gentleman, and lie proved the justice of his case, and consequently that the “ Mercury” was wrong, by calling the attention of the Speaker to the fact that there were strangers in the House. The galleries being cleared, members looked very foolish, the member for East Devon particularly so. The effect on the after debate was that, probably because members felt they were wasting their fragrance on the desert air. there was, in the emphatic language of an honorable member, a d d deal less gas than usual during the sitting. Reporters were re-admitted at seven o’clock.