pulously clean. All interior arrangements of hooks, blocks, and gear have been evidently specially designed to suit the requirements of the meat trade. The chief and crowning excellence, however, which is well worthy of record for Sydney readers, was this. All the walls were inlaid with glazed encaustic tiles. The counters were cool marble slabs. The windows were furnished with porcelain plates, and the whole looked so temptingly clean and cool that I could not help wishing some of our Sydney "knights of the cleaver" would take a lesson, and be fired with a noble emulation to even outvie the Auckland butchers in obeying the dictates of common sense and the instincts of cleanliness.
But to get once more back to the North Shore. Lake Takapuna is a lovely circular sheet, evidently the crater of an extinct volcano. The black rugged masses of scoriæ all around leave no doubt as to its volcanic antecedents. There are a few tame swans on the lake. Lovely ferns, orchids, and the crimson flowering pohutaukaua, or Christmas bush of New Zealand, fringe the steep banks, and the scene is one of perfect loveliness. The Maoris tell the legend that as Tahapuna sank and filled with water, so Rangitoto, the steep mountain in the bay, arose. The energy and enterprise of the Aucklanders are here well exemplified in the use they make of the telephone. They have carried it across the harbour in submarine pipes, and a lady on North Shore can order her groceries and joints in town without going more than a few steps.
