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Home , James Hector

New Zealand Journal of History, 43, 1 (2009)

The Sumner Cave Controversy Reconsidered PROVINCIALISM, IDENTITY AND ‘COLONIAL’ SCIENCE

COLONIALISM GENERATED PROFOUND QUESTIONS of identity for the colonizers and the colonized. Before European settlers in could define themselves as a group they needed to define the people(s) they sought to displace. Throughout the nineteenth century settlers of all classes attempted to answer such questions as ‘when did Maori arrive in New Zealand’, ‘where did they come from’, and ‘were they the country’s first inhabitants’? The answers to such questions could provide colonists with justifications for the colonial project: alienating Maori from their land appeared more morally acceptable if it was asserted that Maori had not been in New Zealand for very long, or if it was argued that Maori themselves had displaced a pre-Maori population.1 As well as attempting to justify colonialism, colonists also asked questions about Maori pre-history simply because they wanted to know and understand the land and peoples they were colonizing. Many settlers assumed that the sciences of ethnology, archaeology and philology could answer their questions concerning Maori pre-history.2 There is now a well-established literature dealing with the history of science in colonial contexts.3 Science in nineteenth-century New Zealand was identifiably ‘colonial’, not simply because men of science were called upon to provide for the physical needs of settler communities, or because scientific thinkers in New Zealand had to negotiate a complex web of relations between themselves and recognized scientific leaders in metropolitan centres such as London, but because many European settlers expected science to help them define who they were and how they related to the colony’s indigenous population. This can, in part, explain the considerable popularity of organized science among New Zealand’s settler communities. The New Zealand Institute was the colony’s major focal point for discussions on scientific topics and for debates about what science was and how it should be conducted.4 Formed from autonomous provincial societies, each of which was an important symbol of provincial identity and authority, from its foundation in 1867 the Institute was also influential in the development of the humanities and the creative arts. In addition, it provided the elite with a prominent social meeting place.5 Membership peaked at over 1300 in the early 1880s and included politicians, judges and clergy alongside engineers, medical doctors and government-employed men of science.6 The Institute was a significant source of print material, not only through its annual volume — the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (Transactions) — but also through the coverage of its activities in

18 THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 19 newspapers and the private publication of addresses and papers delivered to its incorporated societies.7 Maori pre-history featured prominently at the meetings of societies incorporated with the New Zealand Institute, and in the late 1860s and early 1870s debate centred upon the relationship between Maori and the extinction of the moa, a giant extinct flightless bird, the existence of which had been dramatically announced to the scientific world by the comparative anatomist Richard Owen in London in 1839.8 By the time of the New Zealand Institute’s formation the moa had become a symbol not only of New Zealand, where it had once lived, but of the achievements of European ‘civilization’ in New Zealand. Museums were built in which moa were accorded pride of place.9 Overseas exchanges of moa bones enlarged the holdings of local scientific institutions.10 New Zealand men of science asserted their intellectual autonomy by producing lists of moa species and by developing theories on the relationship between moa bones and excavations of pre-historic Maori sites.11 Men in New Zealand’s fledgling scientific societies vigorously discussed whether Maori had lived alongside and hunted the moa and, if so, when the moa died out, and whether Maori were responsible for its extinction. A further point of discussion was the extent to which theories developed in Europe could be applied to the study of New Zealand’s past. For example, could Maori pre-history be described by the theory proposed by John Lubbock, the English banker and naturalist, in which the Stone Age was divided into the Palaeolithic, during which humans used chipped flint tools, and the later Neolithic, during which polished tools were developed? These debates were central to the infamous Sumner Cave controversy, which bitterly divided New Zealand’s settler elite during the mid- 1870s. The Sumner Cave controversy provides a case study to analyse science in late nineteenth-century New Zealand. The dispute, which has been discussed by many previous scholars, has been written about in recent years as part of biographical studies that show personality clashes between leading scientific figures, or in terms of contemporary scientific and racial theories.12 Here the caves controversy is employed to reveal the complex relationship between scientific and political institutional structures on the one hand, and scientific and racial theories on the other. The dispute also illuminates many of the ways in which science in New Zealand was identifiably colonial: during the controversy questions of settler group identity were paramount, and the relationship between men of science in New Zealand’s provinces and those in the colonial capital in , and the relationship between New Zealand men of science and metropolitan experts in London and elsewhere, were contested and redefined. Much within the Sumner Cave controversy, however, was not specifically colonial, but reflected concerns common to contemporary metropolitan scientific disputes, in particular the centrality of social status and class, and questions about what it meant to create a scientific fact.13 Furthermore, we should not assume, as scholars such as Amiria Henare have, that all scientific theories concerning Maori pre-history were necessarily attempts to justify the colonial project.14 Historians should follow Tony Ballantyne’s wise advice that ‘we must pay close attention to the diverse forces that shaped the 20 FRANCIS REID production of historical and ethnological texts. We must not reduce colonial knowledge to being an instrument deployed at will to protect and maintain imperial authority.’15 The Sumner Cave controversy erupted in August 1874 when James Hector, director of the New Zealand Geological Survey and Colonial Museum, and manager of the New Zealand Institute, read a paper by Alexander McKay to the Wellington Philosophical Society.16 McKay was a field assistant on Hector’s Geological Survey, and had been employed on the advice of Julius Haast, director of the Canterbury Museum, under whom McKay had previously worked as a collector of fossils.17 At its heart the controversy concerned whether McKay, a working-class Scot with little formal education, had the right to produce an account of excavations he had carried out as Haast’s employee before Haast himself had produced a paper on the subject. McKay’s paper gave a brief description of the Sumner (or Moa-bone) Cave, located just outside Christchurch, which McKay had excavated for Haast in 1872, and it hypothesized on the cave’s formation, before outlining the excavation’s key findings.18 McKay stated that moa bones were found together with polished stone tools in a bed called the conglomerate, and that this was overlain with a dirt-bed separating it from a higher bed containing shellfish remains.19 In McKay’s opinion the division between these beds marked ‘a very long blank in the history of the cave as a human habitation … [which] only the desertion of the cave during the Moa-hunting times … can account for’.20 As to ‘whether the Moa-hunters were Maoris or another race’ McKay did not ‘think that any light has been thrown upon the mystery … the Moa was either exterminated long before by another race, or … the present inhabitants arrived here not 350 years ago, but 1,350, and … one of their first works was the extermination of the Moa’.21 McKay was thus inconclusive on whether Maori or an earlier race had exterminated the moa. The only new information he presented was that the moa-hunters, whoever they were, appeared to possess polished stone implements. It was this, however, that struck at the heart of Haast’s moa theory, which was based on Lubbock’s division of the Stone Age into a Palaeolithic and a Neolithic. Haast believed the moa had been hunted by a Palaeolithic people who possessed chipped stone tools, but no polished implements.22 Because Maori were Neolithic, Haast reasoned that the moa-hunters were a distinct race who inhabited New Zealand before Maori arrived. McKay indicated that this was false, and he suggested that the reason few polished tools had been found amongst moa remains was because ‘a stone hatchet, or a polished mere [club], was an implement less serviceable in the dismemberment of a fallen Moa than a sharp flake or flint’.23 McKay’s paper, which was read together with other correspondence relating to the time and cause of the moa’s extinction, was not the focus of much scrutiny or debate at the meeting at which it was presented.24 Hector stated that ‘the only grounds Mr. McKay had for doubt as to the recent date of the Moa’s existence seemed to be the absence of Maori traditions with regard to it’ but in his opinion ‘modern Maoris seem to know all about it’.25 It seems that most of those present were also convinced that the moa had been hunted by Maori and had died out in the recent past. While Wellington was seemingly THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 21 unanimous, however, debate concerning the moa’s extinction raged throughout New Zealand, with Hector and Haast the leading figures in opposing camps: both men had published papers outlining their positions in the 1871 volume of Transactions.26 By 1874 each man’s position was widely known.27 F.W. Hutton, the provincial geologist of Otago, for example, informed Hector that he planned to present evidence of moa bones dating from the nineteenth century which would ‘materially damage Haasts [sic] beautiful cut and dried scheme’.28 What made McKay’s paper different was that objections to it centred on questions of scientific authority and social status. Haast responded in a paper presented to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury that was a masterful justification of his position and much more detailed than McKay’s paper.29 Haast only mentioned McKay by name in his appendix, where he showed that not only was McKay employed as a labourer, but that of the two labourers on the excavation McKay had been on the lower rate of pay.30 Haast refuted allegations that he had withheld evidence inconvenient to his theory, and he provided information absent from McKay’s paper.31 McKay, for example, had not mentioned that a Maori burial had been unearthed in the cave.32 With regard to polished stone tools, Haast suggested that moa-hunters employed them in ‘the building of their dwellings, or manufacture of their canoes and wooden implements’, while chipped flint tools ‘were probably used for the chase or for cutting up and preparing their huge game for the oven and their meals’.33 Haast thus acknowledged the need to modify his view that moa-hunters did not possess polished tools.34 Having made this concession, however, he denied that it should alter his belief that the moa died out before Maori arrived in New Zealand. He added that polished stone implements had been found ‘buried in littoral beds, 15 feet below the surface in undisturbed ground’ and therefore ‘the use of polished stone implements dates far back in pre-historic times’.35 Haast thus argued, as he had in his original 1871 paper, that accepting that moa-hunters possessed polished stone implements did not necessarily mean that the moa’s extinction was of recent occurrence.36 For Haast the evidence remained compelling that Maori had never known the moa. He argued that the ‘absence of any shells [in moa-hunter excavations] proved … that the population who exterminated our huge birds did not look with a favourable eye upon the food, used almost exclusively by their successors’.37 Haast added that ‘none of the [moa] bones of the kitchen middens were gnawed by dogs’.38 This highlighted a further distinction between Maori and the moa-hunters: the former had domesticated dogs, the latter did not.39 As a postscript, Haast explained why McKay’s paper breached scientific etiquette. This postscript, along with Haast’s entire paper, appeared in the Christchurch newspaper the Press and was printed in other newspapers including the Wellington weekly the New Zealand Mail, as well as later appearing in the proceedings section of Transactions.40 Haast explained that he had read a summary of McKay’s paper in the Press and that it contained ‘all the principal results of my excavations … published without my permission or consent’.41 He noted that he had first met McKay three years earlier, when McKay was working as a labourer at a flax mill, and that McKay ‘appeared 22 FRANCIS REID to be very fond of geology’ and desired to be taken ‘on one of my journeys to look after the horses, &c’.42 McKay spent several months in the field, during which time Haast ‘found him zealous’ and decided to employ him ‘in menial work at the Museum … [and] to collect fossils at the Waipara … all that time … lending him books and doing everything in my power to help him on’.43 When Haast obtained funds for an exploration of the Sumner Cave he took McKay and ‘another working man … superintending the work myself’.44 Thus, Haast stated, ‘not only were the principal discoveries [at Sumner], with one exception made under my own eye, or I may say with my own hands, but all the measurements were also made by myself’.45 Moreover, when the excavated material was deposited in the Museum, Haast explained to McKay ‘the nature of every object discovered (he did not know the difference between the bones of a bird and of a mammal)’ and Haast gave him ‘freely my views about the whole bearings of these interesting excavations’.46 When the work was completed McKay wrote Haast ‘some notes on the same … which … after reading, I tore up as of no value to me’.47 It therefore grieved Haast ‘that a man, for whom I have done everything in my power to help him on in the world, should thus … gain an unenviable notoriety’.48 Furthermore, Haast was astonished that Hector had helped McKay because ‘Dr. Hector must know that the abettor of such a transaction is as guilty as the perpetrator himself’.49 McKay responded to these charges with a letter to the New Zealand Mail explaining that ‘Dr. Hector’s connection with the affair extends no further than that … he read my paper … before the Philosophical Society — a favour which he is in the habit of extending to many more besides myself’.50 McKay added that, given Haast had employed him solely as a labourer, he could not ‘see that Dr. Haast has any claim to any facts or theories I might observe or entertain on matters which … were quite outside my especial duties’.51 McKay explained that his intention in writing the paper had been ‘to give to the world the theoretical bearings of the facts collected by me on his [Haast’s] previously published theories’.52 If ‘I filched notions from him’, McKay added, then they came from what Haast had published, ‘and not … verbal instructions received from him’.53 McKay reversed Haast’s scientific etiquette argument by implying that the real reason Haast was angry was because the evidence demonstrated flaws in his theory. The ‘explorations were made two years ago’, McKay declared, ‘since which Dr. Haast has had plenty of time to publish his views, and it is my belief that but for the above paper by me the public would not have had any communication from Dr. Haast for a long time to come’ because ‘the facts collected conflicted so strongly with his pet theories respecting moas and moa-hunters’.54 McKay concluded by portraying himself as a victim and an industrious self-improver. ‘It is true’, he stated, ‘I was engaged in menial occupations; but I cannot see why, not having had the superior advantages of education which Dr. Haast seems to have enjoyed, I should be subject to his sneers because I try to raise myself to a higher position in the intellectual world’.55 McKay thus exploited his humble background to assert that he was an industrious seeker of truth, and he implied that Haast was sacrificing truth to defend his theory. This would have gone down well in nineteenth-century New Zealand, where Samuel Smiles’s Self Help was the most heavily-borrowed THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 23 public library book.56 Even though the New Zealand Institute was dominated by the social and political elite, McKay’s case demonstrates that, if skilfully handled, a humble social status could be the basis for claims of scientific authority. The controversy that followed these opening salvos divided opinion along provincial lines, with many commentators believing that the dispute was the product of contemporary political tensions. A letter in the Lyttelton Times from ‘CHERT’ — a reference to the sedimentary rock used by stone-age peoples to make tools — instanced three ‘omens’ indicating that the political autonomy of Canterbury was under threat.57 The Sumner Cave dispute was the writer’s second omen. ‘Alas’, ‘CHERT’ declared, ‘there was a postscript to the narrative [Haast’s], where the clever man of the world forgets his astuteness and commences a savage attack on the director of the Colonial Museum [Hector]’ and thus, the writer questioned, ‘Does this postscript foreshadow the fightà l’outrance between a provincial and a colonial head of a department?’58 The correspondent suggested that ‘the discussion of the abolition of provinces too deeply affects the sensibilities of those holding official positions, and thus causes the exhibition of these peculiar phenomena’.59 The fact that contemporary political disputes concerning provincial identity and autonomy could merge with scientific controversy has not been stressed by previous historians. John Stenhouse, for example, states that the Institute ‘had a cathartic function, both politically and religiously. Politicians who had been at each others’ throats during the day could retire to a meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society at night and amicably discuss the latest fossil discoveries, the day’s hostilities rapidly fading.’60 However, politicians could also retire to their local scientific society and complain about the ungentlemanly conduct of their associates in other societies. At the Canterbury Philosophical Institute meeting following Haast’s presentation of his paper and postscript, a motion was read and passed unanimously protesting against the publication of McKay’s paper and calling upon the ‘representative [on the New Zealand Institute board of governors] of this Philosophical Institute, [William] Rolleston, Esq, to take what steps he may deem necessary to exclude it from publication in the Transactions of the Institute’.61 The closeness of provincial politics and institutional science is demonstrated here; William Rolleston was also the Superintendent of Canterbury.62 Dr Powell, the honorary secretary of the Canterbury Institute, added that if McKay’s paper was published ‘they could not … remain affiliated to the New Zealand Institute’.63 The Philosophical Institute of Canterbury thus appeared united in considering McKay’s paper a breach of scientific etiquette and in attempting to prevent it being published. The following month, however, at the Philosophical Institute’s AGM, this consensus was challenged by Thomas Henry Potts, the English-born runholder, provincial councillor and native bird expert.64 Potts moved ‘That the resolution … carried on the 1st October 1874 be expunged from the minutes’.65 It is possible that Potts, who was friends with both Haast and Hector, was keen to avoid rupture between them, or between Christchurch and Wellington more generally.66 Whatever the case, his feelings evidently motivated him to attend a Philosophical Institute meeting, which was something he rarely did. 24 FRANCIS REID

In response, C.C. Bowen and L. Walker moved an amendment ‘that a copy of the resolution passed on the 1st October 1874 be forwarded to Dr Hector with a request that he will … give his opinion to the Board of Governors on the matter’.67 Potts withdrew his motion in favour of this amendment, perhaps realizing that his motion would be unsuccessful, or perhaps agreeing that Hector needed a chance to justify his actions.68 This new motion was carried eight votes to seven, with Haast, who chaired the meeting, opting not to vote.69 Although the Philosophical Institute was split down the middle, to the outsider it would still have appeared that they were unified in attempting to prevent the publication of McKay’s paper. In response to this resolution, Hector advised the New Zealand Institute’s board of governors to disallow Haast’s protest because McKay and Haast had arrived ‘at different conclusions respecting an ethnological question’ of some importance.70 McKay had not given a detailed description of discoveries made under Haast, but gave ‘only such a general outline as is necessary to make his views intelligible until his former employer should divulge the result of the explorations’.71 McKay, moreover, in his explanation of events, stated that he ‘had no intention to forestall Dr. Haast’ because he had believed Haast ‘had no intention of publishing anything on the subject’.72 Presented with this evidence, Hector, together with W.T.L. Travers, J.C. Crawford, and the Colonial Governor, the Marquis of Normanby, who were present at a meeting of the Institute’s board of governors in December 1874, judged the protests of Haast and the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury to be without foundation.73 From their perspective, because McKay’s paper contained ‘views different from those held by Dr Haast on a subject of general interest’, it was ‘desirable that both papers should be published in the proceedings’.74 New Zealand men of science and their correspondents had a variety of responses to Haast’s protest and to the board of governors’ judgement. J.D. Enys wrote to Hector from the Wellington Club saying ‘What a d––– fool Haast has made of himself and he has carried away others with him, I am sorry to say’.75 F.W. Hutton informed Haast ‘that in my opinion McKay had no right at all to publish anything about the Sumner Cave without first obtaining permission from you’.76 Otto Finsch in Bremen informed Hutton that he thought Haast was in the right.77 R.L. Holmes in Fiji wrote to Haast that ‘to us outsiders it certainly appears that Dr Hector is in the wrong’, though he thought ‘Dr Hector was led to believe by your employee that … you were indifferent about who published the results’.78 Newspapers in Otago and Canterbury dismissed the board’s decision as ‘Sheer nonsense’ and suggested that McKay’s defence had been written by a Wellington cabal of Hector, Walter Mantell and Travers.79 Meanwhile, Walter Buller informed Hector that he was ‘disgusted at the tone adopted towards you down South’ and that he could not think of anything ‘more un-English or unfair’.80 In spite of this spectrum of opinion, once the decision was made to publish McKay’s paper some may have expected the controversy to die away. The reason this did not happen was due to the Institute’s structure. When divisions occurred between incorporated societies, or between societies and the central board of governors, they were difficult to resolve, as it was not clear who had THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 25 authority to arbitrate such disputes. On 2 January 1875 Haast thus informed Hector that he would ‘decline to receive any private communication from you’ unless Hector could show it was honourable to publish ‘the results of my own labours without my knowledge and consent’.81 The response of other members of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury was more mixed. When the board of governors’ decision was considered at a meeting on 5 January 1875, there was much discussion and then a motion was carried stating that ‘this Institute does not wish to pursue further the consideration of the course taken by the Board of Governors’ but, because the board had not ‘expressed an opinion upon the general principle urged by this Institute’ it was desirable ‘to obtain an authoritative opinion on the general question [of] how far scientific matter collected by a person employed to collect the same is the property of the person who employs the collector’.82 The motion also charged ‘the [Canterbury Institute’s] Council … to prepare an accurate statement of the case’ and declared that after this statement was ‘laid before the Institute’ it should be submitted to an ‘independent authority’.83 Haast, perhaps feeling that this resolution failed to deliver the condemnation of the board he wanted, or perhaps hoping to demonstrate his continued popularity, tendered his resignation as president of the Philosophical Institute.84 This prompted a motion to be passed requesting he withdraw his resignation. In May 1875, however, he once again tendered his resignation, explaining that so long as it ‘remains a rule [in the New Zealand Institute] … that it is the correct thing for a paid workman to appropriate his employer’s scientific discoveries … I must decline to permit the publication of any of my papers in their transactions’.85 This forced him to resign since, as president, he was expected to deliver an annual address that would be published in Transactions.86 Some contemporaries feared that Haast’s rejection of the board’s decision would result in the disintegration of the New Zealand Institute. , director of Kew Gardens in London, informed Haast that he could not ‘tell you how concerned I am at the breach between … Christchurch and Wellington … . The affiliation of the N.Z. Societies has been quoted over & over again as one of the greatest of beneficial moves … and any premature rupture in it will be damaging to science at large, and tell heavily against whoever takes the initiative in announcing his intention of leaving the Association’.87 But the Institute did not fragment. In the mid-1870s Transactions was the only forum for the publication of scientific articles in New Zealand, excluding coverage afforded by newspapers. Affiliation gave members access to a free copy of Transactions and provided them with the opportunity to publish work without submitting papers to editors in Britain or the other Australasian colonies. This made it hard for any move to disaffiliate to gain momentum. None of this meant that the societies meekly accepted the board’s decision. In fact, societies were more likely to seek reform and redress of undesirable decisions because walking away was not a practicable option. Thus in August 1875 the Otago Institute’s council unanimously passed resolutions stating that in their opinion ‘the course pursued in the [Sumner Cave] matter by the Board … was contrary to usual scientific etiquette’.88 They added that under the regulations regarding publications ‘the Board of Governors had a perfect right to refuse to print Mr 26 FRANCIS REID

McKay’s paper without giving any reason for doing so’.89 This final statement was somewhat perverse as it used the board’s right to act in an arbitrary fashion to argue that the board should not have published McKay. The Otago Institute’s protest indicates that Haast was supported by men not personally influenced by him in Christchurch. It also shows that people who disagreed with him on the moa-hunter question could agree that it was wrong for McKay’s paper to be published. Hutton disagreed with Haast’s theory, and many other members of the Otago Institute’s council stated that they too did not agree with Haast ‘that the final extinction of the moa was so very long ago’.90 These men evidently believed that the board of governors had ignored the legitimate protests of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, regardless of the theoretical questions involved. There was also a more specific reason for the position taken by some of the Otago Institute’s members: both Hutton, who was lecturer in geology and zoology at the University of Otago and curator of the , and had worked as assistant geologist under Hector in Wellington between 1871 and 1874, and John Turnbull Thomson, Otago’s Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands and Commissioner to the Waste Lands Board, disliked Hector’s dominance of New Zealand’s scientific institutions.91 At an Otago Institute meeting ten days before the council passed their resolutions of protest, Thomson read a paper attacking Hector’s method of establishing longitude by accepting astronomical observations made in Sydney and Melbourne and using a chronometer to determine the figure for Wellington.92 Hutton ‘thought that Mr Thomson had proved his case’ and added ‘Dr Hector appeared to be either very ignorant or very disingenuous in the matter’.93 Reports of this meeting motivated one correspondent to the Wellington newspaper the New Zealand Times to state ‘there has been a remarkable outbreak of ill-feeling on the part of some of the scientific men of the colony’.94 In particular, the writer noted Haast’s ‘strong expressions against Dr. Hector’ over the Sumner Cave controversy, and condemned the comments made in Otago concerning Wellington’s longitude which included ‘strongly abusive expressions towards Dr. Hector’.95 The writer concluded that ‘Scientific discussion is one thing, Billingsgate abuse is another thing. It is to be hoped that in future we may stick to the former, and eschew the latter.’96 This call to avoid ‘Billingsgate abuse’ fell on deaf ears. The Sumner Cave dispute did not dissipate for some time. Haast kept the controversy alive by writing to Walter Buller, president of the Wellington Philosophical Society, stating that misrepresentations had taken place in Transactions regarding the title of McKay’s paper, which had been repeatedly ‘advertised … under the title “Explorations of the Sumner Cave”’, but, in order ‘to shelter somewhat the breach of trust of my former workman’, was published as ‘“On the identity of the Moa hunters with the present Maori race”’.97 Haast requested a copy of the relevant minutes from the Wellington Philosophical Society’s ‘Minute book … in order, that the person or persons, who actually committed that falsification may be traced’.98 In response to Haast’s letter, however, the Wellington Philosophical Society declined ‘to entertain a communication couched in terms so intemperate and unbecoming’.99 Haast returned this letter, stating that ‘It would appear … from their [the Wellington Philosophical Society’s] action, THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 27 that they were cognisant of the offence and condoned it’, while Dr Llewellyn Powell, the new President of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, made a second attempt to obtain a copy of the Wellington Philosophical Society’s minutes.100 This attempt was also unsuccessful. The Wellington Philosophical Society denied any falsification had occurred, but were unwilling to furnish Haast or the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury with a copy of their minutes.101 Lingering divisions within the Institute emerged in the election that took place in late 1875 and early 1876 for representatives on the board of governors. The members chosen to vote on behalf of the six incorporated societies were Thomas Kirk for Auckland, Mr Crawford for Wellington, the Bishop of Nelson, Mr Bonar for Westland, Mr Thomson for Otago, and Haast for Canterbury. These men had to elect three individuals from amongst themselves to be representatives on the board. After the first two rounds of voting Bonar and Crawford were selected, and there was a tie for third place between Kirk and Haast, requiring a further round of voting.102 In the final vote Kirk was elected four votes to two, Haast being supported only by himself and Mr Thomson of the Otago Institute.103 Arguments were common during the early years of the New Zealand Institute’s existence, and although the tone of debate during the Sumner Cave dispute was at times vicious and personal, it was by no means exceptional in that regard.104 The Sumner Cave controversy, however, was more intense, longer-lasting, and gained more press coverage, than other scientific disputes, and in many ways other disputes thus came to be its satellites.105 It is therefore unsurprising that it spilled over to the political sphere. Not only were men of science members of the settler elite, and thus mixed with politicians in social settings, but there was considerable overlap between the two groups.106 The intellectual elite was tiny during this period: according to the census of 1874 only 414 New Zealand residents held university degrees.107 The Institute’s incorporated societies would not have survived without the participation of politicians, alongside other members of the elite.108 In 1875, 56% of the Ministry (five of nine), 48% of the Legislative Council (21 of 44), and 34% of the House of Representatives (27 of 80) were members of a society incorporated with the Institute. These figures remained comparatively high until the mid-1890s. The close relationship between the political and scientific elites meant men of science used political influence to gain advantage over opponents and colleagues. This, at least, was what Hector’s supporters feared Haast would do while Hector was out of the country between early 1875 and late 1876. While Hector was meeting with British correspondents and attending the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Bristol, then travelling to Philadelphia to act as New Zealand Commissioner to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he was not able to defend himself against Haast’s accusations.109 In July 1875 , Hector’s father-in-law, and erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives, warned Mantell that he had heard that Haast ‘will endeavour to obtain a motion in his favour in the assembly’, continuing that it was ‘unfortunate that Hector is absent just now’ and adding ‘I shd. hope there are enough in the assembly to see through the … vanity & charlatanry of Haast. But I am by no means sure 28 FRANCIS REID of it on second thoughts. For the House does not superabound with brains nor yet with honesty.’110 In October 1875, in another letter, Monro asked Mantell ‘Has anything taken place of late with regards to that ridiculous accusation of Haast’s. There seems to be a [nest] of people in Xch. who worship him as a great hero. A man more possessed with small and contemptible vanity I never met in my life.’111 It was therefore in an attempt to protect Hector that in October 1875 Mantell moved a motion in the Legislative Council relating to the Maori burial in the Sumner Cave.112 Mantell explained that according to the published account ‘the explorers came across what was called a skeleton’, however, he had been informed that deception was involved in that description because ‘The bones were generally covered by skin … and at first the discoverers doubted whether they were not the remains of a white man’.113 In fact, Mantell alleged, ‘So strongly were the discoverers impressed with the apprehension of being interfered with by the police, that the skeleton was removed as secretly or quietly as possible to the Christchurch Museum’.114 Mantell therefore desired ‘a formal inquiry’ to put ‘a check upon the too great enthusiasm of their scientific men, and prevent them … from getting into that state of devotion to science which in culminated in the performance of Burke and Hare’.115 Daniel Pollen, Premier and Colonial Secretary, and a member of the Auckland Institute, embraced Mantell’s motion and suggested that if Mantell was willing ‘to accept the office of Coroner for the purpose, he (Dr. Pollen) would undertake that the honorable gentleman should receive the appointment’.116 Ernest Gray, a Legislative Councillor from Canterbury, responded to Mantell’s motion by asking on what basis he claimed ‘that this body was surreptitiously taken from the place where it was found’.117 Mantell took this as a cue to enhance the reputation of McKay, stating that his evidence came from ‘the workman who … first discovered those remains … who was regarded as the future Hugh Miller of New Zealand — Mr. Alexander Mackay [sic]’.118 By comparing McKay to Hugh Miller, the famous self-taught working-class Scottish geologist, Mantell was asserting, as McKay had earlier, that a humble social status could be consistent with claims of scientific expertise. Mantell also acknowledged that ‘scientific men as a rule were excessively quarrelsome’, and in this respect ‘he gloried in the fact that he was not a scientific man’.119 While declining Pollen’s offer to make him a coroner, Mantell reiterated that his motion was intended to ascertain whether the skeleton was ‘a recent victim … or whether the body was an interesting specimen of the antiseptic qualities of sand’ having been ‘preserved notwithstanding the vast number of years — 20,000 or 30,000 — this man was supposed to have been lying in the cave’.120 Here Mantell was ridiculing Haast’s theory of an ancient pre-Maori race of moa-hunters, even though Haast had claimed the skeleton was that of a Maori and had never suggested animal or vegetable tissue could be preserved for up to 30,000 years. Thus, whether as a joke, or because they genuinely believed an inquiry was required, the Legislative Council agreed to Mantell’s motion.121 Mantell’s strategy appears to have been successful, as there was no move by Haast’s supporters to obtain a parliamentary motion in his favour, though it is possible they never contemplated such a thing; in September 1875 Hutton THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 29 had advised Haast to ‘let the matter drop’.122 The only other mention of the matter in Parliament occurred in August 1876 when Mantell tabled another motion prompted by the publication in the London-based scientific journal Nature of his remarks made in relation to his original motion: the quotation ‘was to this effect: “He [Mantell] gloried in the fact that he was not a scientific man, and he did hope he would be able to go to his grave without incurring that disgrace”’.123 Mantell declared that such a statement, coming ‘after the kindness he had experienced from scientific men generally … would be an act of gross and insane ingratitude’, but he had ‘never intended to say anything of the kind’.124 He proposed, therefore, ‘that the same record that contained the imputed impertinence on his part towards his friends, should also contain his absolute disclaimer of it’.125 What Mantell did not mention was that the quotation appeared in a letter from Haast complaining about Nature’s coverage of the Sumner Cave controversy and asserting that Mantell’s original motion ‘was treated throughout the colony as a joke’ as Mantell was ‘the recognised jester of the Legislative Council’.126 Back in Parliament, Mantell argued that his original motion had not been intended as a joke and that most parliamentarians had also not regarded it as such, and this was ‘sufficiently proved by its unanimous adoption by the Council’.127 Pollen dissented from Mantell’s conclusion, explaining that he ‘thought at the time that it was a joke … and one of the best things he had heard for a long time’.128 Mantell replied ‘even at the present time he could not see the joke’.129 Debate in Parliament concerning the Sumner Cave was thus gently extinguished, and constituted victory for Hector and his supporters given discussion centred on the ethics of Haast’s excavations, without any mention being made of the controversy surrounding McKay’s paper. When Haast and his supporters acted upon the resolution passed by the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury in January 1875 to seek the opinion of an ‘independent authority’, they believed their position would be vindicated if the facts were stated to an impartial (overseas) observer. Thus in September 1875 the Philosophical Institute read and adopted a statement prepared for transmission to the President of the Royal Society of London.130 Their action illuminates the relationship between men of science in New Zealand and metropolitan authorities. The Royal Society was the most prestigious scientific society in the English-speaking world. But there was a more specific reason why the Royal Society President was an appropriate person to ask to intervene. The president at this time was Joseph Hooker, who had visited New Zealand in 1841 and corresponded regularly with several men in New Zealand, including both Haast and Hector.131 From the perspective of Canterbury’s Philosophical Institute, Hooker could override the New Zealand Institute’s board of governors. This seems to imply some belief that the New Zealand scientific community should be deferential to metropolitan experts. However, in response to Hooker’s eventual judgement, the board of governors refused to acknowledge that anyone had the right to hear an appeal relating to one of their decisions without their express approval. The case thus demonstrates that New Zealand men of science were at times deferential, but only when it suited their scientific or political ends.132 30 FRANCIS REID

David Oldroyd argues that Hooker needed to ‘tread very warily’ to avoid offending his New Zealand correspondents, on whom he relied for exchanges of plants and information.133 Perhaps to help the controversy die down, and to avoid making his judgement the source of further vitriol, Hooker marked the opinion he sent to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury as ‘NOT intended for publication’.134 While this document was never published, some months later Hooker supplied Hector with a private copy of it so that he too could be aware of its conclusions.135 In answer to the question ‘Has a paid workman a right to publish his Employer’s discoveries, or theories arising therefrom, without his employer’s consent and knowledge’, Hooker divided workmen into two classes: ‘mere labourers’ of whom ‘nothing further is claimed than the specimens’, and workmen who were ‘skilled assistants, and paid not only to excavate and collect materials, but to make scientific observations, obtain results and suggest theories … all of which are the property of the employer’.136 Hooker added that McKay had been ‘employed and paid as an ordinary excavator and collector, and was hence not bound to give other information to his employer than he did give’.137 Had McKay been employed as a skilled assistant, then the Philosophical Institute would have been justified in their attempts to block his paper. Hooker also sided with the board of governors that publication of McKay’s paper was justifiable, and in regards to the Wellington Philosophical Society’s minutes Hooker noted that the only discrepancies he had observed ‘appear to me to be unimportant’.138 However, Hooker did not criticize the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury for challenging the board’s decision. Nor did he consider McKay and his supporters without fault, for he could think of no reason why McKay ‘should not have communicated to Dr. Von Haast his intention of publishing on the caves’.139 If Hooker intended his judgement to cease hostilities then, on balance, he was at least partially successful. Following the arrival of his report in the colony, the controversy moved out of the public sphere; discussion retreated to private conversations and correspondence.140 Canterbury’s Philosophical Institute accepted Hooker’s report as final and obeyed his request not to publish its contents.141 This led to curiosity among those who had not seen the report. Hutton informed Mantell, for example, that ‘Haast wrote to me about Hooker’s report. He says that it is strictly private and not for publication … . From this we can form a good idea as to the nature of the report.’142 Because Hooker’s report vindicated the decision to read and publish McKay’s paper, it is thus somewhat surprising that the Institute’s board refused to acknowledge that it had any legitimacy. In May 1877 Travers wrote to his fellow board members asking whether the questions submitted to Hooker, and Hooker’s report, had ‘yet been forwarded to you or … published in the proceedings of the Canterbury Society, and if not to move that they should … be made public without delay’.143 At a board meeting in September 1877, however, the board passed a motion that ‘no further action be taken’ because ‘no decision of the Board of Governors can be submitted in appeal to any other tribunal without the knowledge and consent of the Board’.144 To ensure no further controversies would so completely engulf the Institute, another motion was passed stating that Transactions’ editor (Hector) should ‘submit to the Board THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 31 of Governors any passages … which may seem likely to disturb the friendly feelings which should be maintained among the members’.145 After three years of acrimony, therefore, the board declared that no metropolitan authority had the right to overturn their decisions, and they implicitly acknowledged that the Sumner Cave controversy had been negative for the Institute.146 Few within New Zealand’s intellectual elite remained untouched by the Sumner Cave controversy. Yet, in spite of the damage it caused to social relations between men of science, the careers of the leading protagonists were not significantly harmed. Haast, for example, remained a local hero in Canterbury and continued to be influential throughout the colony, eventually being chosen ahead of Hector as New Zealand Commissioner to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886.147 This seeming paradox is best explained by considering that all of the leading figures within the New Zealand Institute were involved in the dispute at some level or other, and the dispute did not result in a comprehensive victory for either side. It is also important to remember that there were numerous other intellectual arguments which divided the settler elite in various different ways, and it would be wrong to stress the exceptional nature of the Sumner Cave controversy. With regards to the scientific theories at the heart of the dispute, it is clear that the controversy did not resolve the moa extinction debate. Even though Hector made converts for his position, proudly announcing in June 1875 that Richard Owen agreed with ‘the modern extinction of the Moas by the Maoris’, debate continued through to the end of the century and beyond.148 The Sumner Cave controversy was fuelled by the colonial elite’s desire to know the pre-history of the indigenous peoples they were displacing, and it assumed a form dictated by the structure of the New Zealand Institute and the nature of provincial political tensions in the mid-1870s. The dispute also reveals that social hierarchies were important, but they could be subverted with dramatic effect. McKay presented himself as humble and self-improving and, in a career which saw him become Government Geologist to the Department of Mines, he continued to proclaim that he was the grandson of a shepherd and the son of a Calvinist artisan.149 He also practised phrenology to assess innate ability separate from social conditioning.150 Always keen to argue that he presented facts as they really were, in his later work on earthquakes he embraced photographic technologies as a method of presenting supposedly unmediated truth.151 This carefully constructed self-image made McKay, in Peggy Burton’s opinion, ‘the patron saint of New Zealand field geologists’.152 Even today, many scientists consider that McKay saw the world as it really was, uninhibited by theoretical preconceptions, as if such objectivity is obtainable. Simon Nathan, for example, writes that ‘Being largely self-taught, McKay had not been biased by European concepts, and developed interpretations from his own observations’.153 The Sumner Cave dispute therefore provides a valuable insight into the cultural position of science in nineteenth-century New Zealand. Not only did science and politics at times intersect, it was often difficult to distinguish between them: the men involved were frequently the same, and scientific institutions mirrored political ones. Scientific provincialism was heightened as 32 FRANCIS REID the structures for provincial governance came under attack. Social status was important for the establishment of scientific authority. Science, politics and provincialism intersected and were at points indistinguishable. Metropolitan authorities were deferred to, but only when expedient for New Zealand’s men of science. In spite of all the institutional and political drivers of the dispute, however, the debate was still ultimately embedded in a colonial context of contest between competing theories about the nature of New Zealand’s past and the identity of its original inhabitants. This case study thus demonstrates the importance of microhistorical analysis for understanding general historical trends. The detailed study of specific objects, rituals and controversies has long been standard among historians of science, but is less common among historians of colonial New Zealand, where discussion is dominated by general surveys and grand hypotheses on the one hand, and narrative-fact driven biographies on the other.154 Analytical case studies provide a method for combining these two strands of New Zealand historiography to enhance our comprehension of historical forces such as colonialism, imperialism and racism. The result is an historical picture of complexity and nuance. In the Sumner Cave controversy, colonialism is best understood as the dispute’s context rather than its cause. But instead of marginalizing colonialism, this conclusion enriches our understanding of its importance. The New Zealand colonial elite was not a homogenous entity, riven as it was by divisions of provincial affiliation, social status and personal political concerns. However, the elite shared a belief that the colonial project was justified, and thus disputes such as the Sumner Cave controversy rarely, if ever, divided groups of colonial humanitarians from the scientific racists. Detailed analysis reveals that such neat divisions simply did not exist.

FRANCIS REID University of Lincoln, UK THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 33

NOTES

1 Peter Clayworth, ‘“An Indolent and Chilly Folk”: The Development of the Idea of the Myth’, PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2001. 2 Tony Ballantyne, ‘The “Oriental Renaissance” in the Pacific: Orientalism, Language and Ethnogenesis in the British Pacific’, in Tony Ballantyne, ed., Science, Empire and the European Exploration of the Pacific, Aldershot, 2004, pp.321–44; K.R. Howe, The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?, Auckland, 2003, pp.164–5; Michael Belgrave, ‘Archipelago of Exiles: A Study in the Imperialism of Ideas: Edward Tregear and John Macmillan Brown’, MPhil thesis, The University of Auckland, 1979, p.37. 3 For a summary see: R. Drayton, ‘Science, Medicine, and the British Empire’, in Robin W. Winks, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol.V, Oxford, 1999, pp.264–76. 4 Francis Lucian Reid, ‘The Province of Science: James Hector and the New Zealand Institute, 1867–1903’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2007; Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire, Basingstoke, 2002, pp.68–69; Clayworth, pp.41–44. 5 Jeremiah Rankin, ‘Science and Civic Culture in Colonial Auckland’, MA thesis, The University of Auckland, 2006; Heinrich Ferdinand Von Haast, The Life and Times of Sir , K.C.M.G., PH.D., D.SC., F.R.S., Explorer, Geologist, Museum Builder, Wellington, 1948, pp.599–601. 6 F.L. Reid, ‘“The Democratic Politician does not Trouble Himself with Science”: Class and Professionalisation in the New Zealand Institute, 1867–1903’, Tuhinga, 16 (2005), pp.21–31; Giselle Margaret Byrnes, ‘Inventing New Zealand: Surveying, Science, and the Construction of Cultural Space, 1840s–1890s’, PhD thesis, The University of Auckland, 1995, pp.346–9. Also see Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford, 1981, p.xxi. 7 Paul Star, ‘New Zealand Environmental History: A Question of Attitudes’, Environment and History, 9, 4 (2003), p.466; Lynnette E. Lochhead, ‘Preserving the Brownies’ Portion: A History of Voluntary Nature Conservation Organisations in New Zealand, 1888–1935’, PhD thesis, Lincoln University, 1994, pp.8, 14, 90. 8 Simon Thode, ‘Ideas of Extinction, or the articulation of theories between the years of 1812 and 1960 illustrating the extirpation of species within nature, with a study of the New Zealand fauna, and specific reflection on the giant flightless birds of those Isles’, MA thesis, The University of Auckland, 2007, pp.45–64; Richard Wolfe, Moa: The Dramatic Story of the Discovery of a Giant Bird, Auckland, 2003, p.21; Trevor H. Worthy and Richard N. Holdaway, The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric Life of New Zealand, Bloomington, 2002, p.12; Atholl Anderson, Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa-Hunting in Prehistoric New Zealand, Cambridge, 1989; J.W. Gruber, ‘The Moa and the Professionalising of New Zealand Science’, The Turnbull Library Record, 20 (1987), p.61. 9 Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century, Kingston and Montreal, 1988. 10 Thode, pp.70–75; Wolfe, p.157; Gruber, p.85; H.F. Haast, pp.481–7. 11 Ruth Barton, ‘Haast and the Moa: Reversing the Tyranny of Distance’, Pacific Science, 54, 3 (2000), pp.251–63; Gruber pp.61–100. 12 J. Yaldwyn, E. Dawson and J. Davidson, ‘The First Ethical Controversy in New Zealand Archaeology: Joseph Hooker’s Confidential Ruling in the Haast V. McKay Case’, Archaeology in New Zealand, 49, 4 (2006), pp.282–92; Amiria Henare, Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange, Cambridge, 2005; Wolfe, p.162; N.M. Adams, ‘John Buchanan, F.L.S. Botanist and Artist (1819–1898)’, Tuhinga, 13 (2002), p.97; Caroline Thomas, ‘Professional Amateurs and Colonial Academics: Steps Towards Academic Anthropology in New Zealand, 1860–1920’, MA thesis, The University of Auckland, 1995, pp.4, 6, 48–54; Anderson pp.88–108; C.A. Fleming, Science, Settlers, and Scholars: The Centennial History of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Bulletin 25, Wellington, 1987, p.26; Belgrave, pp.28–29; David Roger Oldroyd, ‘Geology in New Zealand Prior to 1900’, MSc thesis, London University, 1967; H.F. Haast pp.641–740. One partial exception to this generalization is Simon Thode’s recent thesis on theories of extinction in the period 1812 to 1960. Thode devotes a chapter to the moa-hunter debate of the 1860s and 1870s, which he analyses using Actor–Network Theory. The Sumner Cave dispute, however, is not the specific focus of Thode’s analysis, and his evidence is drawn exclusively from printed sources. Thode, pp.65–91. 34 FRANCIS REID

13 Rankin, pp.23–24. 14 Henare, pp.174–8. Also see Howe, pp.164–7 and Anderson pp.88–108. 15 Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, p.192. 16 Wellington Philosophical Society general meetings minute book, 8 August 1874, MS- Group-0212 MSY-3444, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), Wellington. Also see Howe, p.164; Anderson, p.102. 17 Memo for Alexander McKay, 10 February 1873, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Unregistered Correspondence 1864–1913, MU147 Box 4 Folder 2, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Archive (TPA), Wellington, indicates that McKay’s transfer to the Colonial Survey did not involve tension between Haast and Hector. Also see H.F. Haast, p.652. 18 A. McKay, ‘On the Identity of the Moa-hunters with the Present Maori Race’, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (TPNZI), VII (1874), pp.98–105. 19 ibid., p.100. Also see Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, p.208. 20 McKay, p.101. 21 ibid., pp.101, 105. 22 Howe, p.165; J.M. Booth, ‘A History of New Zealand Anthropology During the Nineteenth Century’, MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1949, pp.68–70. 23 McKay, p.102. 24 TPNZI, VII (1874), p.496; J.W. Hamilton, ‘Notes on Maori Traditions of the Moa’, TPNZI, VII (1874), pp.121–2; Wellington Philosophical Society general meetings minute book, 8 August 1874, MS-Group-0212 MSY-3444, ATL, Wellington. 25 TPNZI, VII (1874), pp.493–5. 26 J. Haast, ‘Moas and Moa Hunters. Address to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury’, TPNZI, IV (1871), pp.66–107; J. Hector, ‘On Recent Moa Remains in New Zealand’, TPNZI, IV (1871), pp.110–120. Also see Thode, pp.75–84; Thomas, pp.21–22; Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, p.207. 27 Anderson, pp.90–100; Hamilton to Hector, 10 July 1874, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Registered Correspondence 1871–1883, MU94 Box 3 Folder 1, TPA, Wellington. 28 Hutton to Hector, 25 August 1874, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Registered Correspondence 1871–1883, MU94 Box 3 Folder 2, TPA, Wellington. 29 Anderson, p.103; Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, p.213. 30 J. Haast, ‘Researches and Excavations carried on in and near the Moa-bone Point Cave, Sumner Road, in the Year 1872’, TPNZI, Vol. VII (1874), p.82. Also see Yaldwyn, Dawson and Davidson. 31 Haast, ‘Researches and Excavations’, p.54. 32 ibid., p.68. 33 ibid., p.72. 34 ibid. 35 ibid., p.81. 36 Haast, ‘Moas and Moa Hunters’, p.105. 37 Haast, ‘Researches and Excavations’, p.63. 38 ibid., p.73. 39 ibid. 40 Press, 24 September 1874, p.2; New Zealand Mail (NZM), 3 October 1874, p.20; TPNZI, VII (1874), pp.528–30. 41 ibid. 42 ibid. Also see H.F. Haast, pp.650–1. 43 ibid. 44 ibid. Also see H.F. Haast, p.641. 45 ibid. Also see S. Shapin, ‘The Invisible Technician’, American Scientist, 77 (1989), pp.554– 63. 46 ibid. 47 ibid. 48 ibid. 49 ibid. Also see Paul Star, ‘From Acclimatisation to Preservation: Colonists and the Natural World in Southern New Zealand 1860–1894’, PhD thesis, University of Otago, 1997, p.152. 50 NZM, 3 October 1874, p.20; TPNZI, VII (1874), p.538. 51 ibid. 52 ibid. THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 35

53 ibid. 54 ibid. 55 ibid. 56 Tom Brooking, ‘Use it or Lose it: Unravelling the Land Debate in Late Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History (NZJH), 30, 2 (1996), p.149. Also see Tom Brooking, The History of New Zealand, Westport Connecticut, 2004, p.62; J.M. MacKenzie, ‘A Scottish Empire? The Scottish Diaspora and the Interactive Identities’, in Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds, The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement, , 2003, p.24. 57 CHERT to the editor of the Lyttelton Times, undated, Hector Papers: Newspaper Clippings, MS-0445-1/13, Hocken Library (HL), Dunedin. 58 ibid. 59 ibid. 60 John Stenhouse, ‘The “Battle” Between Science and Religion over Evolution in Nineteenth Century New Zealand’, PhD thesis, Massey University, 1985, p.62. Also see John Stenhouse, ‘Catholicism, Science, and Modernity: The Case of William Miles Maskell’, Journal of Religious History, 22, 1 (1998), p.73; John Stenhouse, ‘“A disappearing race before we came here”. Doctor Alfred Kingcome Newman, the Dying Maori, and Victorian Scientific Racism’, NZJH, 30, 2 (1996), p.134; John Stenhouse, ‘Darwin’s Captain: F.W. Hutton and the Nineteenth-Century Darwinian Debates’, Journal of the History of Biology, 23, 3 (1990), p.416; Ross Galbreath, Walter Buller: The Reluctant Conservationist, Wellington, 1989, p.120. 61 TPNZI, VII (1874), p.531; Press, 2 October 1874, p.3; 1 October 1874, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 p.120, Macmillan Brown Library (MBL), Christchurch. 62 Rolleston was, according to one source, ‘sympathetic to Haast’, while elsewhere it is stated he ‘disliked Julius von Haast’: H.F. Haast, p.538; Winsome Shepherd and Walter Cook, The Botanic Garden Wellington: A New Zealand History, 1840–1987, Wellington, 1988, p.193. 63 TPNZI, VII (1874), p.531; Press, 2 October 1874, p.3. 64 Paul Star, ‘T. H. Potts and the Origins of Conservation in New Zealand (1850–1890)’, MA thesis, University of Otago, 1991. 65 5 November 1874, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 p.125, MBL, Christchurch. 66 Star, ‘Potts’, pp.38–39, 108–9. Also see H.F. Haast, p.166. 67 5 November 1874, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 p.125, MBL, Christchurch & TPNZI, VII (1874), pp.532–3. 68 ibid. 69 ibid. 70 TPNZI, VII (1874), p.536. 71 ibid. 72 ibid., p.537. 73 21 December 1874, New Zealand Institute Minute Book 1867–1903, MU193, pp.60–61, TPA, Wellington; TPNZI, VII (1874), p.535. 74 ibid. Also see Hector to Haast, 23 December 1874, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443- 3/15/11, HL, Dunedin. 75 Enys to Hector, 23 October 1874, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Registered Correspondence 1871–1883, MU94 Box 3 Folder 2 2149, TPA, Wellington. 76 cit. Thomas, p.52; Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, pp.217–8, also p.166. 77 Finsch to Hutton, 13 May 1875, Hutton Correspondence 1875–1889, CA372, TPA, Wellington. 78 Holmes to Haast, September 1875, Haast Papers 1843–1887, MS-Papers-0037 Folder 90, ATL, Wellington. Also see Holmes to Haast, 20 February 1876, Haast Papers 1843–1887, MS- Papers-0037 Folder 90, ATL, Wellington. Holmes had previously been employed under both Haast and Hector: J. Haast, ‘Origin and Early History of the Canterbury Museum: Being the Annual Address’, TPNZI, Vol.XIV (1881), p.511; H.F. Haast, p.567. 79 cit. Anderson, p.103. Also see H.F. Haast, p.509. 80 Buller to Hector, 30 August 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/13/9, HL, Dunedin. 81 Haast to Hector, 2 January 1875, New Zealand Institute Miscellaneous Papers 1868– 1909, MU282 Box 1 Item 5, TPA, Wellington and Haast to Hector, 2 January 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/15/11, HL, Dunedin. 36 FRANCIS REID

82 5 January 1875, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 pp.134– 5, MBL, Christchurch & TPNZI, VII (1874), p.535. 83 ibid. 84 ibid. 85 Press, 7 May 1875, p.3; 6 May 1875, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 p.138, MBL, Christchurch. Also see Bothamley to Hector, 10 May 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/11/5, HL, Dunedin. 86 ibid. 87 Hooker to Haast, 29 June 1875, Haast Papers 1843–1887, MS-Papers-0037 Folder 102, ATL, Wellington. Also cit. H.F. Haast, p.733. 88 20 August 1875, Minute Book of the Otago Institute 1869–1883, MS-128(A) pp.74–76, HL, Dunedin and Hutton to the Manager of the New Zealand Institute, 21 August 1875, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. Hutton conferred with Haast before drafting these resolutions: Thomas, p.52 and H.F. Haast, pp.667–70. 89 20 August 1875, Minute Book of the Otago Institute 1869–1883, MS-128(A) p.75, HL, Dunedin. 90 24 August 1875, Minute Book of the Otago Institute 1869–1883, MS-128(A) p.76, HL, Dunedin. 91 For friction between Hutton and Hector: Thomas, pp.34–36. 92 10 August 1875, Minute Book of the Otago Institute 1869–1883, MS-128(A), p.72, HL, Dunedin. Also see Gillies to Hector, 13 December 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443- 3/14/4, HL, Dunedin. 93 ibid. Also see Thomas, p.56. 94 SCIENCE to the editor of the New Zealand Times, 19 August 1875, Hector Papers: Newspaper Clippings, MS-0445-1/13, HL, Dunedin. 95 ibid. 96 ibid. 97 Haast to Buller, 25 August 1875, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851– 1906, MU276 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. 98 ibid. Also see 8 August 1874, 10 February 1875, Wellington Philosophical Society general meetings minute book, MS-Group-0212 MSY-3444, ATL, Wellington. 99 6 September 1875, Wellington Philosophical Society council minute book, MU280 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. Also see Buller to Haast, 30 August 1875, and Gore to Haast, 7 September 1875, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. 100 Annotation by Haast dated 14 September 1875 on Gore to Haast, 7 September 1875, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington; Powell to Buller, 22 September 1875, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. 101 28 January 1876, Wellington Philosophical Society council minute book, MU280 Folder 3, TPA, Wellington. Also see Gore to Powell, 29 January 1876, New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 4, TPA, Wellington. 102 5 January 1876, New Zealand Institute Minute Book, MU193, TPA, Wellington. 103 New Zealand Institute General Correspondence 1851–1906, MU276 Folder 4, TPA, Wellington. Also see 14 February 1876, New Zealand Institute Minute Book, MU193, TPA, Wellington. In the second round of voting the Bishop of Nelson had also supported Haast, but he changed his vote to support Kirk in the final round. 104 For example: Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Outwards Letterbooks, MU465(3) pp.750–2 [MU465 is the digital version of MU13], TPA, Wellington. 105 For example: Hector to Mantell, 20 June 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/11/9, HL, Dunedin. 106 Rankin, pp.60–98; James Beattie, ‘Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 1840–1941: Climate Change, Soil Erosion, Sand Drift, Flooding and Forest Conservation’, Environment and History, 9, 4 (2003), p.383; Keith Sinclair, A History of New Zealand, revised edition edited by Raewyn Dalziel, Auckland, 2000, p.113; Ross Galbreath, Working for Wildlife: A History of the New Zealand Wildlife Service, Wellington, 1993, p.3; M.E. Hoare, ‘The Board of Science and Art 1913–1930: A Precursor to the DSIR’, in M.E. Hoare and L.G. Bell, eds, In Search of New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage, Wellington, 1984, p.25. 107 Malcolm McKinnon, ed., New Zealand Historical Atlas Ko Papatuanuku e Takoto Nei, Auckland, 1997, Plate 53. THE SUMNER CAVE CONTROVERSY RECONSIDERED 37

108 Compare with: Fiona Hamilton, ‘Pioneering History: Negotiating Pakeha Collective Memory in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, NZJH, 36, 1 (2002), p.72. 109 Robert Ian McKenzie Burnett, ‘The Life and Work of Sir James Hector: With Special Reference to the Hector Collection’, MA thesis, Otago University, 1936, p.155; John L. Ewing, ‘The Work in Otago of Sir James Hector Provincial Geologist 1862–1865’, Honours degree thesis, University of New Zealand, 1929, p.72; Nature , 1876 (Vol. XIII), pp.258–9. 110 Monro to Mantell, 2 July 1875, Mantell Family Papers, MS-Group-0305 MS-Papers-0083- 351, ATL, Wellington. 111 Monro to Mantell, 29 October 1875, Mantell Family Papers, MS-Group-0305 MS-Papers- 0083-351, ATL, Wellington. 112 H.F. Haast, p.740 and Anderson, p.103. For evidence that this motion was not intended as a joke: Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, pp.208–10 113 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), 1875, 19, pp.546–7. Also see Buller to Hector, 22 October 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/13/13, HL, Dunedin. 114 NZPD, 1875, 19, p.547. 115 ibid. 116 ibid., p.548. 117 ibid. 118 ibid. Also see D.R. Oldroyd, ‘Nineteenth Century Controversies Concerning the Mesozoic/ Tertiary Boundary in New Zealand’, Annals of Science, 29, 1 (1972), p.44. 119 NZPD, 1875, 19, p.548. 120 ibid. 121 [Mantell] to Hector, 26 October 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/13/14, HL, Dunedin. 122 Thomas, p.52. Ten years later, however, during a different dispute, Haast threatened ‘to have the whole matter — Geological Survey and New Zealand Institute — enquired into during the next sitting of Parliament’: I.D. Dick, Narrative Notes Towards a History of Scientific Endeavour in N.Z., Vol. 2, CA578 Folder 6, p.268, TPA, Wellington. 123 NZPD, 1876, 21, p.248. 124 ibid. 125 ibid. 126 Nature, 14 (1876), pp.90–91. Also see Nature, 13 (1876), p.196; 14 (1876), pp.576–9. 127 NZPD, 1876, 21, p.248. 128 ibid., p.249. 129 ibid. 130 5 August 1875, 2 September 1875, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 pp.141–2, MBL, Christchurch; Adams, p.97. 131 Yaldwyn, Dawson and Davidson; James John Endersby, ‘Putting Plants in their Place: Joseph Hooker’s Philosophical Botany, 1838–65’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002; Fleming, p.26; H.F. Haast, pp.247–50, 730. 132 For a similar conclusion: Rankin, p.164. 133 Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, p.215. Also see Kerryn Louise Pollock, ‘Botanical Colonisation and Environmental Change: Exchange and Distribution, Botanical Utility, and the Wellington Botanic Garden, 1869–1891’, MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004, p.30. 134 Hooker to Powell, 15 December 1875, Haast Papers 1843–1887, MS-Papers-0037 Folder 103, ATL, Wellington. Also see Hooker to Hector, 2 April 1876, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Unregistered Correspondence 1864–1913, MU147 Box 4 Folder 5, TPA, Wellington. 135 ibid. 136 ibid. 137 ibid. 138 ibid. 139 ibid.; Thomas, pp.51–52. 140 For example: Hector to [Fereday], 11 May 1877, New Zealand Institute Miscellaneous Papers 1868–1909, MU282 Box 1 Item 5, TPA, Wellington. 141 6 April 1876, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury Minute Book 1864–1884, A1 p.153, MBL, Christchurch. 142 Hutton to Mantell, 7 July 1876, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Registered Correspondence 1871–1883, MU94 Box 3 Folder 2 2589, TPA, Wellington. 38 FRANCIS REID

143 8 September 1877, New Zealand Institute Minute Book, MU193, TPA, Wellington. 144 ibid. 145 ibid. 146 However, this was not the last time that a participant in a New Zealand scientific dispute threatened to use the Royal Society as an arbiter: 20 February 1895, Wellington Philosophical Society general meetings minute book, MSY-3448 pp.153–8, ATL, Wellington. 147 H.F. Haast, p.242; S.H. Jenkinson, New Zealanders and Science, Wellington, 1940, p.46. 148 Hector to Mantell, 20 June 1875, Hector Correspondence, MS-0443-3/11/9, HL, Dunedin; Thode, pp.90–91; Wolfe, p.196; Clayworth and Thomas, p.74. 149 Fragments of the life history of Alexander McKay, MS-1177 p.3, ATL, Wellington; The Life of Alexander McKay, MS-Papers-0242-01, pp.1–2, ATL, Wellington. Also see Peggy Burton, The New Zealand Geological Survey, 1865–1965, Wellington, 1965, p.21. 150 Waters to McKay, 25 September 1888, Colonial Museum and Geological Survey: Inwards Unregistered Correspondence 1864–1913, MU147 Box 6 Folder 10, TPA, Wellington. 151 Oldroyd, ‘Geology’, p.243. 152 Burton, p.38. Also see Yaldwyn, Dawson and Davidson; I.D. Dick, Narrative Notes Towards a History of Scientific Endeavour in N.Z., Vol.2, CA578 Folder 6, p.271, TPA, Wellington; Jenkinson, p.33. 153 Simon Nathan, ‘The New Zealand Geological Survey, 1865–1892’, Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/Geology/GeologicalExploration/3/en accessed 27 March 2008. 154 For a fuller discussion of this point: Reid ‘Province’, pp.181–8.