OTAGO.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 480, 17 May 1851, Page 51

OTAGO.

We have received six numbers of a New Otago paper named the Witness, published at Dunedin ence a fortnight. By these we learn that our friends at the south are progressing surely, if slowly. The celebration at Forbury of Mr. Valpy's Harvest Home, brought together a large party of settlers, who did ample justice to the good cheer provided for them by the hospitable host. This gentleman, who we believe to be the largest proprietor in the settlement, seems well satisfied with the result of his own experience in Otago farming, and urges his fellow settlers to follow the example which he has set them. This is the more satisfactory when we find that the late harvest was not so favourable to the saving of the crops as preceeding ones in that settlement. In the early part of March there was a succession of close calm showery weather, which proved very detrimental to the wheat, blackning the straw deeply and quickly, in a manner the home experience of the colonists had not prepared them for. The catterpillar also had done mischief in some instances ; and we are told that a field of eight acres of wheat, sown in July, was wholly destroyed by these insects in September. This seems extraordinary to us, as catterpillars seldom make their appearance here in numbers until the grain is nearly ripe. Tbe Witness publishes the yearly account of a farm of fifty acres, and makes out a nett return to the proprietor of £297 Us.

There seems to be a strong desire on the part of the colonists to get a good road from Dunedin to Port Chalmers. A committee had reported on the practicability and probable cost of such a work, which they state can be accomplished for £4,581 ss.

The subject of Pastoral Regulations was also exciting attention. Those at present in existence are declared to be " an obstruction rather than an encouragement to pastoral husbandy ; and a committee is therefore appointed to consider how these can be amended. At the meeting which decided on this step, another resolution was passed, in our opinion of very questionable utility :—lt: — It was proposed and carried that a " Landowners' society should be immediately formed." These class societies in young communities are productive of more evil than good. The Revenue return for the quarter ending the 3 1st of March shows a Revenue of £696 7s. Id., and an expenditure ot £642 16s.

There have of late been a variety of rumours in circulation aa to further legal changes in, and even in addition to, the judicial bench. Lord Langdale will, it is reported, resign, at no very distant period, the Mastership of the Rolls. The short experience of only two ViceChancellors is said to be so unfavourable to that experiment, as to be likely to lead, on the reassembling of parliament, to the introduction of a measure for tbe re-appointment of a third, to keep down the pressure of suits in Equity. Now that Lord Cottenham is ill and abroad, Lord Lyndhurst almost deprived of sight and unfit for business, Lord Campbell occupied in the Queen's Bench, Lord Chancellor Truro unable to greatly reduce the arrear of appeals in the Court of Chancery, and Lord Brougham threatening to pay a visit in the spring to the United States, some further provision for the exercise of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords on the meeting of parliament will, it is obvious, have to be made, bo there is a very prevalent belief (we may add a strong desire) that should the senior puisne Baron ot the Exchequer be then disposed to retire on tbe pension he has so well earned, a peerage would be conferred on him. A great Hungarian colony is projected in laxes, to be named after Koesutb.