AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2462, 21 April 1888, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

[By Electric Telegraph.— Copyright.! Sydney, April 19. The Comptroller of Prisons, in his annual report, which has been laid beforo Parliament, suggests that first offenders should be treated to a course of nine months' severe discipline, which should virtually ba a system of solitary treatmerit, instead of being kept with other prisoners for a term of years, during which they form criminal associations from which they rarely manage to free themselves. There is great excitement in the Gundagai district over the reported discovery of a gold-bearing reef of extraordinary value in the vicinity. The exact locality of the discovery has Dot been allowed to transpire. H. M.s. Harrier was purchased by the London Missionary Society for the New Guinea work. Melbourne, April 19. A large frontage in Elizabeth-street has been sold at £1200 per foot. Scott's Hotel, with GO feet frontage to Collinsstreet, was submitted to auction to-day, and passed in at £100,000. The s.B. Orizaba has beaten the record between England and Australia, having accomplished the passage from land to laud in thirty-two days and three hours. Brisbane. April 19. Rabbits are spreading with great rapidity in the interior, and are now eighty miles north of the furthest point previously readied by them.