man" are out of all proportion to the benefits he confers on the patient consumer. It is high time Australians awaked out of their apathy as regards their fruit trade.
So, too, with fish supplies. Schnapper here (I am speaking of Auckland) can be caught, down by the Thames estuaries and bays, in thousands; delicious flounders and flatfish abound, mullet teem, other kinds swarm. And yet it is either a famine or a feast. At times none can be had. Wellington, I am told, is the best supplied with fish of any city in Australasia, and the fishmonger's shop and the fisherman's calling are recognized as being of equal importance with the butcher's or baker's. Room surely for a new departure in our fish supply.
Butcher meat, too, as I am on gastronomic topics, demands a word. The beef and mutton in Auckland are delicious. Immeasurably superior to the supplies common to Sydney—and the sausages! My mouth waters yet as I recall their succulent juiciness and exquisite flavour. The ordinary Australian sausage is a B.M.—a bag of mystery—so long as there is plenty of thyme and sage; it matters not how old, how black, how dry, and how unsavoury the other ingredients may be.
The butchers' shops in Auckland are better than anything of the kind I had yet seen in the colonies, and it should be remembered, too, that the climate is more favourable to the trade than the sweltering heat of New South Wales.
The shops are lofty, well ventilated, and scru-
