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 together. The reptile can make its own burrows, and for egg-laying it does; but it prefers basking to burrowing.

For fishermen New Zealand is, like all other good fishing regions of the earth, "a paradise." All around its coasts is a great variety of fish, and in hundreds of lakes and streams trout are found. Altogether New Zealand has about two hundred and thirty kinds of fish, including mackerel, bream, mullet, flounder, barracouta, cod, butter-fish, herring, trumpeter, king-fish, and groper. It also has the very singular frost-fish, which is never taken with hook or net, but swims ashore, especially on frosty mornings; and the peculiar deep-sea ribbon-fish, which loses its swimming power and floats as helplessly as a block of wood when it chances to come near the surface.

Such a fishing country is Aotearoa that English and Scottish sportsmen annually go there to catch trout; and the Liberal Government, seeing another opportunity to distinguish itself, became a fishmonger not long before the Conservatives relieved it of its fishing gear. In the thermal wonderland trout commonly weigh from ten to twenty pounds, and they are so plentiful there that on the shores of Lake Taupo and along the Tongariro River Maoris are said to feed them to pigs.

New Zealand is celebrated not only for its fish resources. It is renowned for one of the biggest fish stories the world has ever heard. Unlike others, this tale has not expanded with repetition; apparently it is big