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Leather is, of course, manufactured, the bark of a New Zealand tree, the wattle, being substituted for the oak bark in the tanning process. The leather is made into Colonial boots and shoes, machinery belting, and other articles. But English boots seem to have the preference extended to them among fashionable circles of New Zealand society, apparently on account of their more elegant shapes.

The leather trade is hardly in a very prosperous condition, though why it should not be prosperous I am unable to