The Correspondence of Julius Haast and James Hector, 1862-1887 Sascha Nolden, Rowan Burns & Simon Nathan Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133D December 2012 Published by the Geoscience Society of New Zealand Inc, 2012 Information on the Society and its publications is given at www.gsnz.org.nz © Copyright Simon Nathan & Sascha Nolden, 2012 Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133D ISBN 978-1-877480-23-2 ISSN 2230-4495 (Online) ISSN 2230-4487 (Print) We gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Brian Mason Scientific and Technical Trust which has provided financial support for this project. This document is available as a PDF file that can be downloaded from the Geoscience Society website at: http://www.gsnz.org.nz/information/misc-series-i-49.html Bibliographic Reference Nolden, S.; Burns, R.; Nathan, S. 2012: The Correspondence of Julius Haast and James Hector, 1862-1887. Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133D, 315 pages. The Correspondence of Julius Haast and James Hector, 1862-1887 CONTENTS Introduction 3 Sources of the Hector-Haast correspondence Changing relationships between Haast and Hector What did Hector and Haast argue about? Acknowledgements References Transcriptions of the Haast-Hector letters 7 Appendix 1: Extracts of letters concerning the Sumner Cave controversy 299 Appendix 2: Other controversies 308 Appendix 3: List of official letters not transcribed 313 Appendix 4: List of letters that we were unable to locate 314 Correspondence of Julius Haast & James Hector, 1862-1887 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133D 1 Figure 1: Location map, showing the main geographic features mentioned in the text. Provincial boundaries are shown as they were in 1862-64 when Haast was working for Canterbury Province and Hector was working for Otago Province. Although Southland was separate from Otago at this time, Hector took no notice of the boundary, and included Southland in his mapping of Otago province. Correspondence of Julius Haast & James Hector, 1862-1887 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133D 2 Introduction Julius Haast1 (1822-1887) and James Hector (1834-1907) were two of the dominant personalities in the scientific life of late 19th century New Zealand. Both had wide interests, and made significant contributions in geology, biology and ethnology. They corresponded for 25 years, from the arrival of James Hector in 1862 until the death of Haast in 1887, and their letters give a fascinating window into changing ideas and scientific controversies. Hector and Haast were primarily employed as geologists, with the hope that they would discover minerals that could be exploited in the young colony of New Zealand. But both men were fascinated by the distinctive fossils and living plants and animals of their new homeland, and gave high priority to building up collections for the museums that they were involved with. In the early 1860s Hector was employed by Otago Province while Haast was based in the adjacent Canterbury Province (Fig. 1). From 1865, Hector was employed by the central government, and had responsibilities for a number of scientific organisations including the New Zealand Geological Survey and the Colonial Museum. In contrast, Haast stayed in Canterbury, and always had more difficulty than Hector obtaining funding. But, as a result, he had few administrative responsibilities, and was able to spend more time on scientific work. Although Haast and Hector generally respected each other as competent scientists, there were regular arguments – a reflection of different personalities, regional rivalries, and competition between the two museums. The extent of their rivalry, and the extent to which it involved other members of the small scientific community, has only become clear as we have transcribed this collection of letters as well as correspondence with Joseph Hooker, Walter Mantell and Frederick Hutton. Sources of the Haast-Hector correspondence We are fortunate that both Haast and Hector carefully saved their correspondence, and that so many of their letters have been preserved. The letters from Haast to Hector were filed in the Colonial Museum, and are now held in the archives of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, mainly in the MU198 and MU147 series. Letters from Hector to Haast were filed by Haast, either at his home or at the Canterbury Museum. On his death in 1887 all his papers were packed up by his son, Heinrich von Haast, and later used as source material for his book, The life and times of Sir Julius von Haast, published in 1948. The Haast family papers were presented to the Alexander Turnbull Library (MS-Papers-0037), and the letters from Hector are held on folders 076-083 which have been microfilmed (MS-Copy-Micro-0717). Some of the pages in this collection are out 1 Julius Haast was awarded a hereditary knighthood by the Austrian Emperor in 1875 which entitled him to use the prefix ‘von’ before his surname. As these letters largely predate his knighthood, he is referred to as Haast throughout this collection. Correspondence of Julius Haast & James Hector, 1862-1887 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133D 3 of order, and the final folder consists of undated fragments. We have been able to reassemble some of the letters, and this is indicated in footnotes. Over 300 letters were written by Haast and Hector to each other, mostly between 1862-1874, and we decided to present the letters in chronological order to illustrate the interplay between the writers over the years. We have generally not included short formal business letters that have no personal component, but those that have not been transcribed are listed in Appendix 3. When we assembled the letters it became clear from checking cross references that quite a number were missing – at least 7 letters from Haast to Hector, and more than 40 from Hector to Haast (listed in Appendix 4). It is not clear if these were never preserved, or if they were taken out of the collection at some stage. Although it is disappointing to realise that the collection is incomplete, we believe that the main themes in the correspondence are clear from the letters that have been transcribed. Transcription of the letters was initially carried out as two independent projects. Rowan Burns and Simon Nathan transcribed most of the letters as part of a study of James Hector, while Sascha Nolden transcribed many of the same letters while studying the correspondence between Julius Haast and Ferdinand von Hochstetter. We joined forces, which has resulted in a more comprehensive publication. Additional assistance was sought from colleagues, especially for the identification and spelling of biological names. Although Haast and Hector both have handwriting that is not easy to read, most of their letters can be deciphered by working through them slowly and carefully. We have retained the spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, abbreviations shown in the original letters, although a few full stops have been added where they were obviously intended. The underlining in the original letters has been retained except for biological names2 and for ships, both of which are given in italics. Words that cannot be read but for which a reasonable guess is suggested by the context are shown by [?]. Words that cannot be read at all are shown by dashes, the number of dashes corresponding to the approximate number of illegible letters. Changing relationships between Haast and Hector Haast arrived in New Zealand in late 1858, and spent eight months exploring parts of the North Island and Nelson as an assistant to geologist Ferdinand Hochstetter. He was subsequently employed to explore the remoter parts of Nelson province, and took up the position of provincial geologist for Canterbury in early 1861. Later that year, Hector was appointed provincial geologist in Otago, and arrived in April 1862. One of his first acts was to write to Haast – the first letter in the series. For the next two years Haast and Hector explored the remoter parts of their adjacent provinces, and often corresponded on geological issues. Hector was one of the organisers of the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition, held in Dunedin in early 1865, and Haast helped organise a display from Canterbury. Hector took up a new position in charge of the New Zealand Geological Survey for the central government in 1865, and moved to Wellington. From this time onwards he was involved in geological exploration all over New Zealand. Haast’s position with the 2 For biological names we have used the convention of capitalizing the name of a genus, but putting the species name in lower case. Correspondence of Julius Haast & James Hector, 1862-1887 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133D 4 Canterbury Provincial Council ended in 1868, and he considered leaving New Zealand. Hector employed him on contract a number of times to undertake fieldwork in different parts of the South Island, especially reporting on coalfields in Canterbury. Haast also obtained some income as director of the Canterbury Museum, and later lectured in geology at the newly established Canterbury University College. In 1874 Hector and Haast had a serious quarrel over the unauthorised publication of the results of an excavation at Sumner, initiated and overseen by Haast. It was an issue that split the scientific community in New Zealand, and has been exhaustively described (for example, von Haast 1948, pp 722-758; Reid 2009; Yaldwyn, Dawson & Davidson 2006). There is a four-year gap in the correspondence. Eventually the two men started communicating again, but there was never the same warmth in their letters as there had been previously. Papers relating to this argument are given in Appendix 1. In 1885 there was debate about the appointment of the Executive Commissioner to the Colonial & Indian Exhibition to be held in London in 1886. Haast, Hector and Buller were reported to be the leading contenders, but Haast was chosen, allowing him a government- funded trip to England and Europe.