AUSTRALIA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 190, 10 May 1860, Page 3

AUSTRALIA.

AGRICULTURAL. At the annual exhibition of the South Australian Agricultural Society, held in Adelaide on the 29th of February, the prize wheat weighed 67 lbs. 8| oz. per bushel; barley, 56 lb. 3 oz.; oats, 45 lb. 5| oz. The dried fruit department was well repre sented. There were currants quite as good as those from Zante. The raisins were some of them very fair, equal to Cape, but vastly inferior to Valencia. Two boxes of .dried apricots were beautiful as to colour, and possibly when soaked and boiled would nearly equal fruit fresh from tlie tree. Dried apples, peaches, pears, and plums were also exhibited that were worthy of commendation. The same may be said of bottled fruits, olives, and pickles, of which excellent samples were exhibited, i Dried figs were poor, but the almonds were .excellent* | There were some excellent specimens of silk, jin the coccoon, and wound; of wax, melted 'and cast into a disk of great purity; of honey, 'also, in large jars, but none in the comb. (There were some excellent cheeses shown; (they were, however, mostly too green. One I of them, if kept a year in a suitable cellar—-

which,, to be suitable, should be some twenty feet under ground in this colony—would have been equal to any Cheshire cheese after being brought from the old country. . Good specimens of colonial soap lay alongside the cheese. At the annual show of the Port Philip Farmer’s Society, on sth April, the first prize for wheat —(a piece of plate value 20 sovs) — was given to the exhibitor of 40 bushels, weighing 67 lb. 2 oz. per bushel. The first prize for oats—(a piece of plate value £ls) was given for 40 bushels, weighing 48 lb; 12 oz. per bushel; and for barley,—(a piece-of plate value £lo)—for 20 bushels, weighing; 55 lb. 14 oz. per bushel. Western District Vintage for 1860. —The vine growers at Batesford and in otherportions of our district are just, concluding grape pressing operations, and if an opinion, may be formed from first tasting,, this year’s vintage promises to be superior iu quality to that of any previous year.— Geelong./fdvet\tiser.