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Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 180, 20 July 1871, Page 6

The Duke of Argyle, as Secretary of it ' for Tulia. has granted a pension of £400 a year to the widow of the lace Sir Henry Durant. The Indian Finance Committee is sitting at Westminster daily. It is making elaborate examinations, which, are likely to last two years. Several appointments of natives and Englishmen to the order of the Star of India are gazetted. The London Chartered Bank of Australia has declared a divided of 8 per cent. The Galatea is being dismantled at Plymouth, and tho Duke of Edinburgh is visiting the Queen at Balmoral. The freedom of the Oity of London has been offered to bim. Sir Henry Rawlinson has succeeded Sir Roderick Murchison as President of the Royal Geographical Society. The new Sydney sovereign is thus described by the '* Morning Herald " : —As our readers are aware, there has been an alteration in the design of the sovereign coined at the Sydney branch of the Koyal Mint, by which ifc is assimilated to the English coin of the same kind. A specimen of this altered coin has been brought under our notice, and, its alloy being copper, there is a marked difference between the colour of that and the coin of the older date. On the reverse, instead of the garland and the word * ' Australia, '* we have now the English coat of arm 3, and in the joining stems of the wreath surrounding it a very small letter S, which signifies that it has been coined in Sydney. There is a probability of gold being found in Western Australia, to the north-east of Champion Bay. The value of gold shipped away from New Zealand since the goldfields were first discovered, amounted on the 31st March last to the prodigious sum of £22,242,460 I The " Wakatip Mail " of the Ist inst says : — At the sitting of the Warden's Court on Friday the Chinese litigants set an excellent example. A day or two before they withdrew all the cases between themselves, aud deposited for each of the several companions the sum of £50-200. The Company that first goes to law is to foifeit £50, and so on. They have also adopted an arbitration tribunal, to whom all matters of dispute between themselves are to be referred. Of course the Europeans would not use these means, but "John" is thoroughly disgusted with the European Courts of ■justice. He says that he always goes "to the wall," and cannot understand it at all. Hence this new movement, v/hich is likely to be adoi>ted throughout tho district. Db. Haast, President of the Canterbury Pbilosopoicalj' Institute, has received a communication from Berlin to the effect that a German scientific expedition would shortly start on a visit to the Pacific, and would probably visit Lyttelton. The rats coming over from Queensland to South Australia are becoming a serious nuisance in the far north. At one house 600 of the vermin were killed in one night.