AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 44, 20 February 1874, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

The following items of news have been compiled from late Sydney papers by the Auckland - Herald': — The miners at St. Arnaud, Victoria, have struck for £2 10s per week. Within a month three "Victorian children have been scalded to death. The Melbourne police are making raids upon the publicans for Sunday trading. Heavy floods have taken place in the southern districts of New South Wales. Two 5-ton guns have been shipped from Sydney to Newcastle, for the defence of the latter harbor. Tho heat in South Australia has been intense, the thermometer on one day standing at 120 degrees in the shade. A Maryborough jury has expressed the opinion that persons suffering from delirium tremens ought not to be sent to gaol. It is stated that seldom within the last twenty years have bush fires in Victoria covered such a large extent of country as this summer. Steps have beeu taken at Adelaide for the establishment of an Inebriate Asylum. One gentleman haa promised a donation of £250. In accordance with a resolution of the Directors, every officer in the Bank of Victoria has received a bonus of ten per cent, on his salary. The Melbourne 'Telegraph' says that the official report shows that the Victorian lunatic asylums are gradually beiDg choked up with imbeciles. It advocates their being boarded out. Tho Melbourne ' Telegraph ' says that th*3 suspension of work iu a vast number of miues in Victoria would be a welcome, and in many ciises a much needed, temporary relief to the shareholders. A deputation that recently waited upon the Victorian Commissioner of Public Works stated that between £300,000 and £400,000 worth of timber was stacked near the Australian Wharf, Melbourne. The Victorian Beetroot Sugar Company has not succeeded in tiding over all its difficulties. A private meeting of the shareholders was held the other day, when a determination was arrived at to sell the stock, plant, machinery, with the lease of the premises, and tho reversionary interest of the company to £5,000 offered by the Government for the production of beetroot sugar. Some larrikins (say the ' Age ') have a curious existence, inasmuch as they are burrowing animals, and live in communities underground, liko marmots, or rabbits, only sallying out at intervals in search of prey, with wbich they retire into their holes and there devour. There is a warren at Hothara, under the floors of some dilapidated old wooden cottages, to which stray specimens from Sunbury are in the habit of fleeing for refuge when hard-pressed, and whence it was lately found impossible to extract one without recourse to the process of smoking him out. But

unquestionably the largest burrow is under the Custom-house shed at Sandridge Town Pier, where a colony of about fifty live. It is impossible for any animal larger or less lithe than themselves to follow them in the mezy galleries of this secure retreat, where they lie in tho midst of abominable foulness, defying purauit.