take the surplus
meat, and so it pays us.

We keep a great number of turkeys on the clearings, as also a less
number of ducks and poultry, to diminish the crickets, caterpillars, and
other insect foes. These birds are now practically wild, and give us
something like sport to shoot them. There are hundreds of turkeys, as
they thrive amazingly, consequently we often have them at table. Eggs,
too, are plentiful enough, whenever any one takes the trouble to hunt up
some nests.

As to wild game of any sort, we get little enough of that; for we cannot
spare time to go after it. Sometimes we may shoot some of the splendid
wild pigeons, some kakas, parrots, tuis, wild duck, teal, or the
acclimatized pheasants. Wild pig is nauseous eating, so that is not
sought after.

Every now and then we go in for fish. There are schnapper, rock-cod,
mullet, mackerel, and herring, or species that answer to those, to be
had for very little trouble. There are also soles, which we catch on the
mud-banks and shallows at night, wading by torchlight, and spearing the
dazzled fish as they lie. When we make a great haul we salt, dry, or
smoke the capture for lasting use. The endless oyster-beds, and other
shell-fish, we rarely touch, they are not worth the time and trouble, we
consider.

Tea is the invariable beverage at every meal, and almost the only one,
too. Milk is generally available in our shanty as a substitute, but
somehow we stick to the tea. We drink quarts and quarts of it every
day, boiling hot, and not too weak. Throughout New Zealand and all the
Australian colonies this excessive tea-drinking is the universal
practice. Even the aboriginal races have taken to it just as kindly. It
is such a good thirst-quencher, every one says, so cooling in warm
weather, and so warming in cold seasons.

We had an earnest medico on a visit to us lately. He inveighs strongly
against tea-drinking, which he says is the curse of these countries. I
think he would preach a crusade against it if he dared; for, of course,
he would have to join issue with Good Templars, Sons of Temperance, and
all the fanatical anti-alcoholists. These zealous reformers are so
blindly infatuated with their hatred for alcohol, that tea seems to them
its natural antithesis, and they vaunt it as if it were a celestial
boon. And such people are a political power out here--worse luck!

The doctor declares--"Tea-drinking is one of the most serious mistakes
of our age and race