"The following rather questionable items appear in the return of expenditure during the last six months on ministerial residences, and have created some comment:—
"Tinakori Road House (Sir J. Vogel's): Overhauling lift, £11, 16s. 8d.; gas-fittings for theatrical stages, £2, 9s. 11d.; hire of piano, tuning and repairing, £10, 4s.; 12 dining-room chairs, at 60s., £36; pink and gold breakfast set, £3; one spring lounge, £10; hire of piano, £7, 10s.
"Molesworth Street (Hon. E. Richardson's): Re-covering suite in plush, £35; knife-cleaning machine, £4, 10s.; hire of piano, £8, 0s. 6d.; hire of piano repairing, £3, 5s.; three gas fires, £9; one dinner service, £14, 18s.; garden hose and fitting, £4, 1s. 4d.
"Tinakori Road (east) (Hon. J. A. Tole's): One walnut card table, £5; two spirit seltzogenes, £5, 2s. 6d.; flower-pots, £1; set best hangings, £9; one mangle, £8, 10s.; three pairs curtains, £5, 12s. 6d.; one child's bath, £1; packing piano from Christchurch to Wellington, £1, 10s.; freight, 9s. 8d."
CHAPTER XXIII.
KAIPARA INSECTS.
This part of New Zealand, as well as suffering in common with the rest of the colony from the ravages of the political caterpillar, is a good deal troubled with other insects, and an entomologist would find in the Kaipara rare opportunities of prosecuting his studies. Some of the specimens are so strange that they cannot fail to strike with their peculiarities the most unobserving, and I will venture to describe two or three of them.
