AGRICULTURE AND STOCK IN VICTORIA.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVII, Issue 50, 23 June 1858, Page 4

AGRICULTURE AND STOCK IN VICTORIA.

The result of the late harvest is now pretty well known, though the official returns are not complete, and will not be for two or three weeks. A very much larger breadth of land has been sown than during any previous year, there not being fewer than 300,000 acres of land under the plough ; and although the crops have been somewhat lighter than in 1856 — 57, the gratifying result is that we are very nearly independent of other countries for our supply of breadstuffs, the quantity of wheat being estimated as being equal to 45,000 tons of flour. In many portions of the colony the yield has bsen as heavy a3 in any former year. At Port Fairy, as much as sixty bushels of wheat to the acre has been garnered, and from fortyfive to fifty has been common enough at Burrumbeet. The deficient crops are attributable partially to their being sown late and exposed to the hot winds, but principally to the want of anything like a scientific system of farming. Very little attention has been hitherto paid to the variations in climate which exist between the various districts of the colony, although there is a difference quite as great between Kilmore and Oarisbrook, or Dantlenong and Albury, as between the North of Scotland and the South of France. The various agricultural societies are exerting themselves most energetically. Shows have been held in nearly every district of the colony, and the results have been most satisfactory. At Albury, on the Murray, a district not particularly well adapted for farming, the best samples of wheat shown averaged 64f lbs., and the worst COlbs. to the bushel. Several ploughing matches are about coming off. At one gathering of this kind held a few days ago. there were sixty-five ploughs on the ground. A grant of money has been made by the legislature for the purpose of founding a model farm in the neighbourhood of Melbourne. The attention which, in former summaries, we have mentioned as being given to breeding, has by no means diminished; and some firstclass entire horses have been lately imported — ■ amongst others, the thorough-bred horse Boiardo, by Orlando. Nor have those interested in horned cattle and sheep been less active ; indeed of such importance has the purity of bovine blood been estimated, that a " Herd-book "is in process of formation. It is somewhat singular that while one set of squatters pay so much attention to improving their breeds of stock, another has quite abandoned breeding, finding that it pays them better to purchase store cattle in the far interior, and to fatten them for market, than to occupy their runs with breeding stock. This is not, however, the case to anything like so considerable an extent with sheep as it is with cattle ; and we shall be surprised if the next return of the Crown Lands Commissioners does not show that our fleecy wealth has increased. — Melbourne Herald.

Extraordinary Case of Bigamy. — At the Cambridge police court, lately, Susannah Anderson, a very respectable looking woman, apparently about thirty years of age, was charged with having married a man named Carr, her first husband, John Anderson, a tailor, being still alive. The facts of the case are somewhat romantic. The prisoner, whose maiden name was Hutt, was married to John Anderson on the 4th of July 1847, and (to use the expressive language of her husband) they lived together "on and off" till April, 1851 ; for they parted, apparently by mutual consent, no fewer than three times. Anderson, in December 1852, went to London, and it became a matter of public rumour that he had enlisted in the 46th, a notorious regiment, and in which it was known he had already two brothers. Now John Anderson has a cousin, one Mrs. Burrows, a bedmaker of Trinity College, who is a constant reader of the Despatch newspaper ; and one Monday, during the raging of the Crimean war, she found amongst the dead list of the hospital of Scutari, the name of " John Anderson," and forthwith made it her business to wait upon Mrs. Anderson, to inform her of her bereavement. In the minds of these two women there was no duubt but the hero of the' 46th, who had won an imperishable name a3 one of the defenders of his country, was John Anderson, the tailor. Mrs. Anderson wrote to the Waroffice, giving a description of his height, colour of his hair, eyes, his complexion, his general appearance, who were his friends, and many other particulars ; and these facts being compared with the dead John Anderson, she was informed, on what should be conceived the very best authority, that John Anderson, her husband, was " now alas! no more." She was further informed that the pay due at John Anderson's death to him, was her's, and she in due time received it. She made application to the Patriotic Committee for assistance, that committee communicated with the War-office, the replies were satisfactory, and papers were fofwarded for her to sign ; and for upwards of a year she received 3s. 6tU and eventually 4s. a week from the Patriotic Fund. At length, Mr. Carr was stricken by the charms of the attractive Mrs. Anderson, arid he proposed. One year and nine months having elapsed since her imaginary widowhood, Mrs. Anderson consented to become Mrs. Carr, and on the 23rd of September, 1856, Mr. Carr led her to the hymeneal altar ; and at Trinity Church, in the presence of many friends, at the same altar where she became Mrs. John Anderson, she was to all appearance made Mrs. Carr. Now all this time John Anderson, instead of having; wielded the sword, had only been plying the needle ; instead of being at Alma, Inkcrman, and Balaclava, he had not bade adieu "to his native land ; " and last month he returned to Cambridge, and the first day of his arrival be became acquainted with his wife's second marriage. The Bench thought they had no alternative but to send the prisoner for tiial; but all we can say is that it is a pity the husband and wife could not be made to exchange places. —English Paper.