The so-called “Battle of Addisons Flat” took place on 3 April 1868. A month earlier, an Irish procession headed by a priest had broken into the Hokitika cemetery and had erected a Celtic cross in honour of three Fenians recently executed in Manchester. A similar but more peaceful demonstration took place in Westport on St. Patrick's Day. Soon afterwards, news arrived of an Irishman's attempt to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney. Fearing a Fenian uprising, the authorities concentrated troops in Hokitika, arrested the Irish leaders, and arraigned them on charges of riot and seditious libel. All were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms and fines. The outbreak at Addisons Flat, a predominantly Irish gold-miners' tent town 8 miles south of Westport, occurred when a party returned from Westport where they had celebrated the Duke's escape from the assassin's bullet. As they marched into Addisons Flat singing patriotic songs, they were met by a hail of stones from the assembled Irishmen and forced to retreat. During the next days Irishmen from the surrounding districts mustered in force at Addisons Flat fully expecting an attack by Government forces, while in Westport the loyalists vainly urged the authorities to allow them to march against the enemy. Thanks to the moderating influence of A. S. Kynnersley, the local warden, an armed clash was averted and the opposing forces never met.

In later years the story of the “Battle of Addisons Flat” has been much embroidered, but there is no reason to doubt Kynnersley's report that “all the wounds received did not require ten inches of sticking plaster, and all the property destroyed would be well paid by a ten pound note”.

New Zealanders are, generally speaking, a law-abiding people. Unpopular regulations concerning drinking or gambling are frequently ignored, but disturbances of the peace are rare and the few riots which have occurred stand out prominently in our history. Popular fancy has dignified some of these incidents with the name of “battles”, but very little blood has been shed in New Zealand riots and few lives have been lost. The causes of these disturbances were religious at first, and in later years economic. No civilian riots have occurred in New Zealand since the depression of the thirties – a sign of the easing of economic and social tensions associated with the growth of the Welfare State.

(Dacrydium cupressinum).

Timber from rimu has been the main native timber in use since about 1910 when it began to displace kauri, and, as far as one can see, it is likely to remain indefinitely in this position. The quantities available, however, will fall rapidly in the next one or two decades as resources become exhausted. The timber of the rimu is comparatively hard and dense. The tree is a conifer belonging to a group of forest trees, which includes the genus Podocarpus, that is widely represented in highland forests in countries on the west side of the Pacific. In the genus Dacrydium there are about 16 species, of which seven are found in New Zealand, with representatives in Malaysia, New Caledonia, Tasmania, and Chile.

There is disagreement amongst botanists as to the division between the two genera Podocarpus and Dacrydium and, also, to which genus the New Zealand species belong. Rimu grows to heights of about 100 ft and occasionally 150 ft, and the trunk is usually about 3 ft, but can be as much as 6–7 ft, in diameter. The branchlets have a distinctive pendulous character, those on young trees being particularly graceful in appearance. The leaves are small and awl-shaped.

Rimu is the most widespread of all New Zealand forest trees, occurring throughout the North, South, and Stewart Islands from lowland to montane forest. In most places the large, rounded heads of a few to a dozen or so trees per acre emerge well above the general level of the canopy of broadleaf trees below. Such forests have little or no regeneration and seldom contain any trees in the intermediate stages. The large trees can be anything up from 700 to 800 or even 1,000 years old. The facts of age and structure of such forest have given rise to the theory that the rimu is a relic of past climates which have been more favourable to it. It is certainly not replacing itself. However, along the edges of some forests on the pumice plateau of central North Island the rimu is younger, and intermediate age-classes and regeneration do occur. It is also present in secondary “scrub” on clay soils of the north.

On the West Coast of the South Island and on Stewart Island a special type of forest, usually referred to as rimu pole forest, occurs on flat, very wet terraces. In these there is complete representation of age-classes from plentiful regeneration onwards. The older trees seldom exceed 3 ft in diameter but they often occur densely with crowns almost touching. These forests do offer hope of permanent management (and so, in the long run, the only permanent supply of rimu timber) since they grow on difficult soils unsuited to agriculture. Rotations, however, must be long and reckoned in terms of a few hundred years.

The European name for rimu, especially in the South Island, is red pine.

by Alec Lindsay Poole, M.SC., B.FOR.SC., F.R.S.N.Z., Director-General of Forests, Wellington.

(1888– ).

Scientist.

A new biography of Rigg, Theodore appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Theodore Rigg was born at Settle, Yorkshire, England, on 6 April 1888 and came to New Zealand at an early age. He was educated at Wellington College and Victoria University. In the First World War, as a member of the Society of Friends, he did relief work in several parts of Europe. He had joined the Department of Agriculture in 1907, and in 1919 transferred to the Cawthron Institute as agricultural chemist. He became assistant director in 1928 and director from 1933 to 1956. He was chairman of the New Zealand Research Council from 1943 to 1954, president of the New Zealand Institute of Chemists from 1942 to 1953, and has held other scientific positions of distinction. He was made a F.R.I.C. and F.N.Z.I.C. in 1956, F.R.S.N.Z., F.R.N.Z.I.H. in 1957, and received the honorary degrees of D.Sc. from Western Australia (1947) and from New Zealand in 1957. He specialised in the study of soil deficiency and was largely responsible for finding a cure for “bush sickness” of soils. He is the author of a number of technical papers on soils, fertilisers, plant nutrition, and the like. He was created K.B.E. in 1938.

(1858–1943).

Labour leader and politician.

A new biography of Rigg, John appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

John Rigg was born in St. Kilda, Victoria, in 1858 and came to New Zealand at the age of five. He was apprenticed at the Government Printing Office where he worked as a compositor for many years. An active unionist, he held leading offices in the Wellington Typographical Society and helped to found the Wellington Trades and Labour Council. In 1892 Rigg was one of four trade unionists appointed by Ballance to the Legislative Council. He supported the Liberal administration and became Chairman of Committees in 1903 and acting Speaker of the Council the following year. In 1905 Rigg was elected president of the Independent Political Labour League but he resigned this office a year later as he still hoped to preserve the traditional Liberal-Labour alliance. In 1909 he contested the Wellington mayoralty as a Labour candidate and edited, for a short time, the new Wellington Labour journal, the Weekly Herald.

Rigg's impartial chairmanship contributed greatly to the success of the Labour Unity Congress of 1913. He supported the waterfront strike that year and was the only member of the Legislative Council to oppose the Government's Labour Disputes Investigation Bill. When his term in the Legislative Council expired in 1914, Massey did not re-appoint him. Rigg became a teacher of French and elocution and a well-known judge of oratory and debating contests. Several books which he wrote on chairmanship, conduct of meetings, and public speaking have gone through many editions and remain in print to the present day. He died in Christchurch in 1943.

by Herbert Otto Roth, B.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Deputy Librarian, University of Auckland.

• N.Z.P.D., Vol. 264 (Obit).

This, the smallest of all New Zealand birds, belongs to the family of New Zealand wrens comprising only four species, one of which, the Stephens Island wren, is extinct. The family is a very ancient one as far as this country is concerned and its relationships are uncertain.

Riflemen are about three inches long, with short wings and an extremely short tail. Males have a green back, yellowish rump, black tail, a yellow bar on the wings, and are pale buff below with yellow flanks. Females are duller, with a brownish striped back. Legs and toes in both sexes are long and slender, and the bill is straight, fine, and pointed. The common call is a staccato high-pitched tzip. Wings are now and then characteristically flicked. Their habitat is the forest, and numbers are usually highest in beech forest where, apparently, the insects and spiders taken as food are most abundant. Riflemen are usually seen running erratically up tree boles as they seek and eat their prey. Flight is weak and only short distances are covered. Nests are commonly made in holes in trees or logs, and the structures, built of fine plant materials and lined with feathers, moss, or scales of tree fern, are roughly spherical and have an entrance tunnel at one side. Four to five white eggs are laid and two broods may be raised in a season.

Not seen north of the Waikato, though occurring on Great and Little Barrier Islands, the species may be found in most forested areas of the North, South, and Stewart Islands. It is absent from the Chathams.

The common name stems from a fancied resemblance of the plumage to the uniform of an early colonial regiment. The scientific name is Acanthisitta chloris. There are two subspecies, one occurring in the North Island, the other in the South and Stewart Islands.

by Gordon Roy Williams, B.SC.(HONS.)(SYDNEY), Lecturer in Agricultural Zoology, Lincoln Agricultural College.

Although the possession and use of pistols have been illegal in New Zealand for many years, the New Zealand Small-bore Rifle Association was granted a permit in 1961 to introduce pistol shooting for a trial period. The Christchurch East club held the first pistol shoot in March 1962, and since that date several more permits have been granted. The association eventually intends to include pistol events in its normal competitions.