Official Gazette for March opens with an article recounting the progress that ie being made with the surveying of the Company's territory. We learn that the system of Registration of Deeds is to give place to the Registration of Title as in the well-known Torrens Act. The Land Office has many amusing stories of the simple-minded way in which one Chinaman will kindly personate and act for another, and how one Chinaman will subscribe himself in two different names on the original and duplicate of a Deed, and then make the astounding declaration (by voice) that his name is something different! which his witnesses will placidly corroborate, the whole party apparently looking upon the transaction as a formality in which their identification should be rendered as difficult as possible."
its. Dominic Daly continues her pleasantly written sketches of Bornean Life, which are matched by Mr. Skertchly's Jungle Notes. As to the carnivorous nepenthe, he writes:—' A few monkeys visited us, pig baths were plentiful, but what struck me most was the quantity of crabs running about on the moss, some of which were three inches across the back. They frequently take a bath ina pitcher-plant, but it is @ dangerous luxury, for their dea half-digested bodies proclaimed but too surely that nepenthes are false friends. The water in the urns before they open is qui good, and I fancy the peptic secretion is only secreted after the urn opens. Then it seems to be attractive, I never saw an old one without some victims in it, flies, and twice I found young birds, Some day bees, wasps, ants, beetles, snails, crabs,
someone will look up this novel piece of natural history."
The Herald hears that a leading Singapore merchant is proposing to start a wharf and warehouse company at Sandakan, and that a syndicate to prospect for coal is also talked of. Saw mills are going up, and the Bachelors of Sandakan, twenty-one in number, had given a ball' at which ten ladies were present. The new school at Sandakan, which is to be used also as a temporary church, was almost finished The trial of Mr. Brack for culpable hom: cide, before Mr. W. B. Pryer as Judge, with a mixed jury, ended in a verdict of "Not Guilty," Mr. J. J. Francis defending the prisoner. The Herald corrects its former statement that Sandakan is 24 hours out of the way between Hongkong and Australia toGhours. The value of land ai houses in Sandakan is steadily increasing, we are told. Anglers will learn with interest that good fly-fishing is to be had on the Kinabatangan, ere is much planting news as usual, and batches of Chinese and Hakka immigrants continue to arrive in the colony. The Government Secretary reports that applications for 55,000 acres of land were approved of in January, as well as applications for 10,000 acres under the new premium of $3 an acre.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.