Now openeth the season when diners in sundry and many country hostelries eat their meals to the music of the buzzing bluebottle. At one backblocks hotel, last mid-summer, I happened to remark to the buxom young party who served me my lunch, something about the cheerful menagerie that hovered and zoomed in the ceiling—where the hanging decorations were. “Oh,” said she, “we never take any notice of them now. They don't settle, that's one good point about them, mister. The boss, he calls them our canaries.”

Man Who Snagged the Waihou.

Auckland Commerce Train passengers recently saw a good deal of that placidly winding river, the Waihou, which flows through a populous rich country from above Matamata to the sea at the Thames. There was a time when it was the only way of getting inland in those parts. For many a mile about Te Aroha and the higher parts it was cumbered with snags, huge logs brought down by floods. That vigorous settler, the late J. C. Firth spent thousands of pounds in clearing the river, to give passage to his steamer, and the man who did the job is still living at Matamata. This veteran is Captain H. H. Tizard, one-time coasting trader, goldfields prospector, native agent, useful all-round settler. He lives not far away from that beautiful warm bathing pool greatly resorted to by the countryside folk. Mr. Firth engaged him to supervise the Maori toilers in the river work, and he found the active young sailor—he is an octogenarian now—just the man for that pioneering task.

Waterfall and Tui.

Not only is there music in the sound of many a Maori place-name, but there is a melodious story in the name-origin. Not far from the Waikato railway line where it crosses the Whangamarino Swamp south of Mercer railway station, there is a small waterfall on the Whangamarino stream which the Lower Waikato natives say bears the name: “Te Ako-o-te-tui-a-Tamaoho” (“The Teaching of Tamaoho's Tui Bird”). The story is that it was here the ancestor named took his young pet tui to teach it to talk. The Maori belief was that the bird could best learn to talk within sound of a little waterfall where no other sound but the steady music of the cascade could penetrate to interfere with the teacher's voice.

The Doctor's Fee.

At Waimamaku, Hokianga, the Commerce Train tourists last month enjoyed the chaffing-match between Dr. G. Smith, Medical Superintendent of Rawene Hospital, and Mr. E. Casey, Divisional Superintendent of Railways, on the subject of “trading in kind.” The Doctor suggested that it would be more advantageous to the country if instead of so much trading in finance, there were more trading in commodities, in other words, mutual barter. Mr. Casey's counter to this was page 11 a suggestion that a patient could pay his doctors for an operation with say, a ham or a flitch of bacon.

This payment in kind was not always mere matters for a joke at a convivial gathering. I remember well enough that it was the only way in which country settlers could discharge their indebtedness. There was once, for instance, a genial Irish doctor in the Upper Waikato whose patients paid him with a ton of firewood or half-a-ton of potatoes, or a load of fruit and vegetables, or a supply of oats for his horse; now and again a sheep or a few sides of bacon.

This was all very well in one way, but the doctor used to complain, good naturedly enough, that he couldn't pass the bacon or the “spuds” on to the town business house which supplied him with drugs for his surgery, and that when he wanted to buy a medical book to keep himself abreast of the times it wouldn't be a bit of use shipping a ton of tawa logs to the bookseller.