of English who only England know? But it is clear that a number of small local syndicates have been making good money, and most of us would understand 1000 per cent. That it is understood locally is clear. It was reported in September that since the beginning of the year seventy-four companies, with capital aggregating £600,000, have been formed. In Victoria, as we have seen, the craze has caught on. The river banks are being pegged there also, and dredges are being set to eat their way through them into the worked-out alluvial flats, as well as to tear up the river beds themselves. The knowing mining "crowd" of Ballarat and Bendigo are not ashamed to admit that for once they must learn of another colony. They get their managers and (to begin with) their machinery from New Zealand. And that others besides Victorians are not above taking a hint may be seen from the following, also taken from a Maori-land paper of recent date. " Orders for three dredges have been placed with (Messrs So and So) of Dunedin, for Siberia. These dredges, which are to be built from the designs of Mr (), consulting engineer, are to be of the type of the dredge near Cromwell, and are to be delivered f.o.b. at Dunedin on the 1st August next. The engines are to be made in England, and the hulls are to be constructed of Siberian timber, which grows plentifully in the vicinity of the river where the dredges are to be placed. Mr Heine, a Russian gentleman, who lately made a tour of Central Otago with a companion, and placed the order in this colony for the dredges, stated to an interviewer that his claim extends a hundred miles along the course of the river in Siberia, and that there are several dredges already at work in that region, but of a very different type to those in Central Otago, which require only two men at each
