The following lively and interesting letter from Taranaki has beon handed to us for publication I Ellerelie, Eltham, Aur. 20, 1891. Dear Old Fellow,— lt has been for the last three weeks * matter of almost daily occurrence for mo fco think it's about time I wrote you, and ns Sunday is a day specially sot apart for good deeds as well us good thoughts, I'm at you ! 1 have a groat dcnl in my mind, but whether you will got anything sensible out of this letter is doubtful. Well, what's most uppermost is horses. We three, Smith, .1 ouos, mid I [thoao names wo need hardly stato are mere disguison of decidedly more aristocratic ones] went down to the horso fair at Hawera yosterday intending to peculate in a few unbroken hacks, but lo ! " the schemes of men and mico gang aft ageo 1 ' — [our youm* fncml is neither Scotch nor a student of Scottish verse ; he moans <l the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agloy"]— and wo (Mine back empty-handed. I nlwayn undorstood that tho horses of the North Island were better than thoso of the South, but I really feel sorry for the people hero when I see the samples of horseflesh which they are compelled to i bostraddle, and, upon my word, I feel sorrier for the horses. It nine-tenths of the horses hore could only grow long ear*' one would not be able to distinguish thorn from donkeys ! There were, perhaps, half a-dozon respectable looking horses out of seventy ottered for sale. Miser able hulf-sturved weeds were the ordor of tho day. It is astonishing, though, how tough they are. It's tho commonest thing to soo a man of twelve stonu weight on top of a thing perhaps as many hands in height, and plodding through mud :i foot deep, seemingly as comfortably us u lurk with a broken wing, [" Handsome is thit handsomo does," oven in horseflesh, lloroward's maro Swallow, tho most famous horse in England in her day, was no buauty to look at, and none of tho famous American trotters would pass for a London cabby's last hopo.] Oh, the roads • — tracks I should call them ! They're enough to break any man's heart, unless ho happens to fall into them and got diowncd. 