NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7785, 3 November 1886, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Concentrated milk is being manufactured in New South Wales.

A vigneron in Nagambie, Victoria, has lost £2000 by a severe frost.

The new Governor at Fiji, Sir Charles Mitchell, has been appointed Consul-General for the Pacific.

The first of what is intended to be a series of annual picnics by the insurance companies in Sydney, was held recently.

The Victorian Government propose to form a permanent military camp near Western Port, for the defence of Melbourne.

The .Southland Times says the Mines Department has hitherto been more for the glorification of the Hon. W. J. M. Larnaoh, C.M.G., than for the good of the country.

According to an Oamaru paper, the rise in the price of wool has induced earlier shearing than usual this season, in order to get the wool away to London to catch the earlier sales.

The leading Australian timber exporters are New Zealand and Western Australia, who last year exported £152,000 and £104 000 respectively, Mew South Wales coming next with £100,000.

A highly influential meeting of laymen in Sydney has formed an association to restrain improper practices and illegal ritual in the public services of the Church of England, and the clergy are also moving in the same direction.

Some of the paintings sent by Dunedin artists to the recent Wellington Art Society's Exhibition attracted considerable attention. The two large oil paintings, one of Kinlook, Lake Wakatipu, and the other a study of Lake Hayes, exhibited by Mr. L. W. Wilson, were purchased by Hie Excellency the Governor.

It is stated that there ere 1800 ironworkers out of employment in New South Wales at the present moment. The amount paid in wages is £187,000 less than if the men were all at work. The depression is the severest that has been known in that colony for the past 25 years, and it has been generally increasing during the past two or three years. Some of the natives on the west side of Cambridge Gulf are very tall (writes a returned Kimberly digger); one has measured 6 feet 6 inches, while another, who would not stay to be measured, towered over the other fellow, and must have been quite 7 feet. In running away he crossed a olaypan, and left his track, with eight feet between his footprints.