AUSTRALIAN NOTES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 15, 9 May 1876, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NOTES.

A medical man practising in BaUarat informs the £; Star" that since the officers of the local boards of health have exercised a vigilant supervision over the quality of the meat sold in the town, there has been an almost total disappearance of the disease known as hydatids. Before tips watchfulness was exhibited the disease had become painfully prevalent in Loth the city and town. Steps are being taken to introduce a new amusement in Melbourne, a meeting having been recently held for the purpose of establishing a La Crosse -Club. It is believed that many who do not care to take pai-t in games of football will be glad to 'jitroduce, as a winter sport, the game of La Crosse. It is a kind of Indian racquets, and is the favourite out-door pastime in Lover Canada. A free pardon has been granted to Edmund Ghinn, a clerk in the Bank of Victoria, who was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for stealing about £2,000 in notes, the property of the bank. [We should like to know oji what grounds. Perhaps Ghinn's friends had influence.] The following is an example of what the Geelong Times" calls the "gross injustice " of the Lunacy Statute :—A man named Y/illiam Vvhitting, who gives his address as M'Crae-street, Sandhurst, came to Melbourne with the intention of going to Adelaide. On arriving at Sandridge he had. no money, and yet, strange to say, a boatman, without fee or reward from Whitting, but simply at his request, put him on board the steamer Aldinga. On the passage outward he was somewhat eccentric, but not to the extent as to lead to the belief that he was insane. Arrived olf Queensclitie, he was smuggled ashore in the pilot's boat and subsequently arrested by Senior-constable Hail as a lunatic not tinder proper control. On being

examined by two meclical men lie was pronounced to be insane, and ultimately; committed to the Kew Asylum, the ; borough of Queensclifr'e being saddled with £G Is." expenses. An engine on the Hobson's Bay railway got off the line, but was soon replaced -without much damage to either person or property. As showing how news gathers in transmission, it is stated that, when the intelligence readied Melbourne, the mishap was magnified into the smashing of the engine and death of the engine-driver. There can be no mistaking what is meant by a "Victorian editor when he inserts the following paragraph : Referring to a certain Shire President in the Western district, the Warrnambool Examiner " writes :—"When the President of a Sliire Council has the ignorance and iiiipjvtinence to say that s it was only by t"ffe courtesy of public bodies that the Presi reporters were admitted to take notes of their proceedings,' we think it is quite within our province to say that he is a consummate fool." The Sale police have, says the " Gippsland Mercury," received information from Senior-constable James, Bsnclock, that payable alluvial gold has been found by Marriott's party on a tributary creek of the Bonang River, which it joins cn the eastern side, and also by one Jarre tt, on another small creek, about half a ' mile lower down 011 the same side of the Bonang River. The new find is about twelve miles from Bendock, and there are thirty men at work on both patches, earning from £5 to £9 per man per week. The sinking is about tliree to eight feet, through granite, sand, a::d black alluvial debris 011 to a granite bottom, and the wash averages about nine inches in depth. The " Queenslander " of the 4th inst. gives an account of a very successful attempt to extract the residue of gold from tailings :—'' 111 the course of nine weeks—from the 2-itii October to the end of December—lvlr. Barton crushed 498 tons of quarcz from a number of claims, which produced an average of only one ounce per ton. The- tailings (hitherto regarded as of value) were then operated upon by the 'buddle,' by which tfiey wero reduced to fifty-seven tons of concentrated stuff, and this having been turned, over to Wheeler's pans, yielded lllf ozs., representing, at £3 6s. per cm., £333 15s. The cost of treatment amounted to £ll-1-, being a fraction over £1 per ounce, leaving a clear profit to the miners whose stone had been crushed of £253 15s. Gd.