INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

Evening Star, Volume III, Issue 789, 15 November 1865, Page 3

INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

The Hobart Town whaling fleet has been very successful, and a Tasmanian Whaling Co. is about to be formed on the joint stock principle. The onion crop in Victoria is almost a total failure, through a species of blight. One grower lost 5 acres out of 25 in the -course of two nights. Sausages of kangaroo meat have been made in Adelaide, and are described as being very palatable. We take the following curious rat story from the Sydney Morning Herald of the ISth ult. : “ The orange trees of this colony have been subject to many adverse influences. Sometimes •.they have suffered from blight and drought ; at others they have been roughly treated by flying foxes and peccant bipeds ; but a new enemy was discovered a few days ago on the estate of Mr „Josephson, M.L.A., at Newtown. One of Mr josephspn’s gardeners observed that a tree in the middle of the orangery was robbed day by day. The rinds were left empty on the ground, each having a circular piece cut out, about the size of a florin. There were also strewn about some of the young leaves and tender branches. A close inspection was made of the tree, and among its topmost branches was discovered a clump of Reaves and twigs, containing a pair of sleek rats, of a glossy slate color. Much has been written in defence of rats, in view of the sanitary condition of thickly inhabited towns. These orangeeaters, however, were killed, it not being thought desirable to encourage a new variety, especially when there was a probability that it might multiply as rapidly as the brown rats, now commonly known, which within a few years of importation from the Bast took possession of the sewers, and exterminated their predecessors.” The man Charles Arthur Dives, alias Elijah Dixon, who was tried at the Ballarat Circuit Court on the 13th October 1563 for the murder of 'his wife and two children, but acquitted on the ground of insanity, committed suicide in the Melbourne Gaol, where he had been ordered to ,be confined during His Excellency’s pleasure. When the pisoners were mustered at six o’clock, the deceased was present as usual ; but the Warder, on visiting his cell two hours afterwards, .discovered him hanging from the upper bar of the iron door, quite dead. The man’s purpose had been accomplished by means of an ordinary silk handkerchief, which he had fastened at ,ouch a height from the ground that, when he was suspended, his feet were several inches from the cell floor. A nugget weighing 5150z., and another weighing SOoz., have been found in new ground near Dunolly. On the 11th instant, an attempt was made by ■a man unknown to criminally assault the wife of Michael O’Brien, a small farmer on the Campaspe. The woman’s screams for help brought her husband to the rescue. The marauder made off, and was at once pursued by the outraged husband, who, only staying to borrow a gun from a neighbor, came up with him about a mile from the scene of the assault. Calling upon him to surrender, the demand was forcibly refused, with the intimation, accompanied by a suitable gesture, that the pursued was in as food a position to defend himself as the pursuer, magining from the action that his safety lay in taking the initiative, O’Brien fired, and the ruffian almost immediately fell. O’Brien at once rode into Ecliuca, and gave himself up to the police. The verdict at the coroner’s inquest was ‘ c Justifiable Homicide. ”