TRICKS OF TRADE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 99, 29 April 1915, Page 4

TRICKS OF TRADE.

Some' tricks of trade are exposed by the Sydney correspondent of the Lyttelton Times, who, after a breezy note on Sydney’s fish supply, goes on to say:—Talking of fish reminds me. A man with a large basket of small smoked fish stood on the footpath at Circular Quay the other evening vending his wares. “’Ere you are,” lie bawled, “real New Zealand blue end, a shilling each.” He had the true instinct of the successful man of business and lied superbly. Each fish was about the size of my hand. They were jewfish, hlacklish and other local products of the inferior kind, which, not finding a market in the flush of schnapper and bream, had been hurriedly put through the smoke-house. The rascal did a roaring trade, and when 1 shook an unbelieving head to an assurance that they were all the way from New Zealand ho grinned a reci-

pnical understanding. The only honest blue cod I’ve detected in Sydney is occasionally on view at an important establishment in the eitv and is ticketed Is Gd a pound, which reminds some people of how far away they are from where the cod came from. But it is not only the peddlers of fish who take the name of New Zealand in vain. I’ve been watching a cheese—or, rather, half a cheese—in a shop window for some days. It first caught my eye with the label, “From the Northern Hirers,” a (lav or two la'er it here the legend, “Prime Canadian.” This gave place to a brazen device, “Heal Bega” (Bega being a dairying centre in New South Wales), which in turn made way for “Real Cheddar.” But yesterday the cheese beginning to look somewhat the worse for wear, and as if it required a dexterous shaving. It got never a shave, hut it achieved an ornate placard which warns the passerby who looks at this third-rate cull of cheese that it is “Best Xew Zealand.”