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Haast and the Moa: Reversing the Tyranny of Distance!

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Haast and the Moa: Reversing the Tyranny of Distance! Pacific Science, vol. 54, no. 3: 251-263 © 2000 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved Haast and the Moa: Reversing the Tyranny of Distance! RUTH BARTON2 ABSTRACT: The powerful position of patrons and interpreters at the imperial centers and the secondary, supportive position of colonial contributors to the scientific enterprise have been emphasized in the literature on colonial science. For Sir Julius von Haast, however, New Zealand provided both the opportu­ nity and the resources for a scientific career of international fame. Moa bones were his most valuable resource. The exchange and sale of moa bones stocked his museum; gifts of moa skeletons brought him honors; and he began to claim that being at the periphery and having seen the bones in situ gave his interpre­ tations credibility. THERE ARE THREE leading characters in this The moa were a family of large flightless story of the scientific moa. Julius Haast birds that had occupied the ecological niche (1822-1887), who was German-born, arrived of browsing animals in New Zealand. In the in Auckland late in 1858, in the employment 1830s, Maori reported them as extinct and of an English shipping company, to investi­ they are now considered to have become rare gate the prospects for German immigration by 1600 (Anderson 1989: 178), but in the to New Zealand. He stayed to become one of mid-nineteenth century it was plausible to New Zealand's leading colonial geologists. In hope that groups might still exist in isolated 1858, the moa itself (16 million yr B.p.-ca. parts of the South Island (Colonial Museum, A.D. 1600) and its creator-discoverer, Richard Haast to Hector, 5 November 1862, MU198/ Owen (1804-1892), had been famous for al­ 1). There were many different moa species­ most 20 years. Owen, who had never set foot some tall and thin, some large and heavy, in New Zealand, was the archetypal scientist and others about the size of a large turkey. of empire whose reputation was made The smaller species were more numerous, but through interpreting the natural riches of the the gigantic ones captured popular and sci­ colonies-naming living and extinct fauna as entific imagination. The largest stood 12 ft he assigned their places in the elaborate clas­ or 3.6 m high, higher in many nineteenth­ sification system of species, genera, and fam­ century articulations when legs and neck ilies. Nevertheless, within 20 years, the Ger­ were extended vertically rather than allowed man immigration agent also became a world to bend or curve (Anderson 1989: 60-62). expert on the moa and wrung from Owen the The moa first came to world scientific at­ admission, "I begin to feel that my share in tention in 1839 when John Rule, an ex-naval the work of restoration [of the extinct birds surgeon from Sydney, tried to sell an unusual of New Zealand] is over. ... You stand at the piece of bone to Owen, then assistant con­ head of my successors in that Work, and servator at the Hunterian Museum of the merit every honour & recompense for your Royal College of Surgeons. Initially sceptical share in the Natural History of your fair of Rule's claim that the bone belonged to Islands" (1874 [cited by Gruber 1987a: 89­ "an extinct bird of the eagle kind," Owen 90]). compared the piece with mammal bones, concluding that it was a fragment of thigh bone from a flightless bird similar in size to 1 Manuscript accepted 1 November 1999. an ostrich. In November 1839, he exhibited 2 Department of History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (phone: 64 the 6-inch piece of bone and presented his 93737599, ext. 7302; E-mail: [email protected]). ostrich interpretation before sceptical col- 251 252 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 54, July 2000 leagues at the Zoological Society of London achievements, they sought them in European (Rupke 1994: 124). forums. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, William But the story of the scientific moa also has Colenso and William Williams of the Church twists and complexities that require modifi­ Missionary Society had begun to take Maori cations to disjunctive models of dependent, reports seriously and were paying Maori for deferential colonial science at the periphery bones of the extinct bird (Andrews 1986: and imperial, theoretical science at the cen­ 127). In 1842 Williams sent a small collection ters of calculation. The story here supports of bones to his old teacher, William Buck­ some of the qualifications and criticisms of land, reader in mineralogy and geology in Basalla's model made by MacLeod (1982), the University of Oxford, who gave them to Inkster (1985), Reingold and Rothenberg Owen. Owen found a large leg bone that (1987: xii-xiii), Butcher (1988), and Enders­ matched his prediction "exactly," he said by (1997: 83-96). Haast himself, contrary to (Rupke 1994: 125), and in 1843, in a com­ the model of colonial science, obtained most munication to the Zoological Society, he of his scientific education in New Zealand. named the bird Dinornis Novae Zealandiae. He was oriented to more than one imperial The news generated great excitement in center. German-born, naturalized-British, London. Prince Albert asked to meet Owen and trained by the Austrian Ferdinand and to see his giant bird (Figure 1). A leading Hochstetter, his most important links were member of the Zoological Society described with London and Vienna. More significantly, it as "the greatest zoological discovery of he had intercolonial relationships that were our time" (Gruber 1987b: 343-347, Rupke not mediated by the center. The most note­ 1994: 127). Scientifically, the prediction was worthy twist to the usual story is that when taken to establish the reliability of Owen's Haast and his fellow colonials began to assert Cuvierian, functionalist methods. Whether their independence and to ask that their con­ sent directly to him or not, almost all bones tributions to the systematic enterprise be from missionaries and government officials in properly acknowledged, they protested not New Zealand passed through Owen's hands only at the unequal and exploitative rela­ for formal description and naming. But not tionship, but also questioned the competence all. In 1842, in an early act of scientific inde­ of the center, arguing that those at the pendence, Colenso had written his own ac­ periphery had interpretive advantages. Moa count of moa bones and sent an article to the bones could not be transported to the impe­ Tasmanian Journal ofNatural Science. How­ rial center of calculation without loss. ever, local publication was slow, and Owen's The recognition of the importance of local 1843 paper had priority (Andrews 1986: flora as a resource for colonial science in 124-131, Gruber 1987b: 339-347). James Moore's analysis of the career of Haast, like Owen before him, used the Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, the German­ moa to build his scientific career. This ac­ born Australian botanist, can be extended to count illustrates some well-recognized rela­ Haast. When Mueller moved to Australia for tionships between European centers and the sake of his health in 1847, he turned to colonial peripheries (Basalla 1967, Latour account his unique access to Australian 1987, Newland 1991). Haast and other geol­ plants and his early medica1-cum-scientific ogists, missionaries, and government officials training. Through decades of hard labor col­ in New Zealand sent collections of moa lecting, comparing, and naming, Mueller bones to the expert in London who named turned the botanical wealth of Australia, and interpreted. When colonials wanted to "green gold" (in Moore's metaphor), into publicize their own interpretations, they symbolic capital. He became the internation­ were often dependent on the patronage of ally recognized expert on Australian botany. men of science in imperial centers to present His capital was reinvested. Naming new their letters or articles to scientific societies. plants after favored colleagues and gifts of When they sought recognition for their exotic plants were a means of extending Haast and the Moa: Reversing the Tyranny of Distance-BARToN 253 FIGURE 1. The moa in London with the great animals of the world. The main hall of the new museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1845. Front left, fossil skeleton of the mylodon; front right, fossil shell of the gigantic extinct armadillo; center rear, a recently deceased elephant. The moa, a plaster cast of Dinornis giganteus, is on the left in the middle distance with an ostrich farther left. (Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons 1845: 35.) credit to colleagues and attracting further the "tyranny of distance" (for debates see symbolic capital to himself (Moore 1997). Chambers 1991 and Knight 1991) became for Most accounts of colonial science empha­ Mueller the advantage of location. size the disadvantages of peripheral loca­ The story told here uses the literature tion. Moore's analysis of Mueller's career, of colonial science to extend previous in­ however, shows that what has been called terpretations of the significance of the moa 254 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 54, July 2000 to Haast's career (Andrews 1986, Gruber Haast's success in Canterbury was dependent 1987a, Sheets-Pyenson 1988). Identifying the upon his turning geology to local use. moa as a valuable local resource to be in­ vested unifies the work of moa collection and classification, emphasized by Gruber and A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY Andrews, with the work of museum building emphasized by Sheets-Pyenson, and the work Little is known of the life of Johann Franz of self-promotion, noted but not emphasized Julius Haast before his arrival in New Zea­ by Sheets-Pyenson. Gruber's account of the land in December 1858.
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