The visitation of Victoria by the electric storm which had devastated New South Wales had not suck disastrous results as in the northern, State, being, in fact, more localised, Two boys who were out rabbitting 1 Werribee, half-way between Melbourne and Geelong, were caught by the storm. A" fierce stroke of lightning from the sky Killed one boy instantly and struck the other one unconscious. Alec him instantly, his clothes being burnt to shreds and his boots destroyed. Mr. Cameron received only a slight concussion, but is suffering severely from shock. When the storm swept over Gardiner's Creek, near Tooronga, a boy of 13 years, Albert George Beaumont, fell into the flood waters and was drowned.
Uptodate the body has not been found. It is rather extraordinary that the heavy rains experienced around the coast have not ventured very far inland, where the great! tracks of wheat-lands are crying' of course, has traversed much of the southwestern part of New South Wales, but not nearly enough to prove beneficial. In the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Settlement, where a considerable number of the farmers are. producing wine grapes, the earliest bearing grapes have been practically destroyed by two heavy showers of rain, which split the variety in question, and the distilleries having it yet opened the season for recelving the crops, practically a total ess is possible,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.