Two characteristics of the Nelson region, diversity of landscapes and isolation, contend for first place in the discussion. The rapid alternation from valley to mountain, from intensive close-packed farming areas to rough grazing, or forest and desolation, from densely populated to uninhabited areas – these are the changes rung for the traveller as he emerges from the hill country to reach Nelson or as he climbs the road leading from Motueka and Riwaka across the bleak pass to Takaka. The isolation of the region is the characteristic borne upon the mind of the visitor when he enters or leaves the district.

Massive blocks of hill country and mountain composed of greywacke and later rocks, volcanic series, but principally of granites and schists, are separated by huge faults from low-lying alluvium-filled plains, extensive, like the one laid down by the Wairoa and Motueka Rivers, or small, like the ones around Takaka and Collingwood. The mountains rise to 5,000 ft, to 6,153 ft in Mount Owen, in the remoter parts; between Golden Bay and Tasman Bay they rise to 3,722 ft and reach over 4,000 ft above the Motueka Valley. These altitudes give some impression of the asperity of the landforms. The economic value of the ranges is negligible; for the most part they remain in native bush or tussock and only on limited fringe areas are they used exclusively for pastoral purposes. The force of the Cobb River has been tapped to produce hydro-electricity, installed capacity 32,000 kW, although it is indicative of the slow development of the area that the station did not come into production until 1944. Small amounts of economically useful minerals are obtained from the more accessible areas – asbestos, 572 tons maximum production, clays, 8,000 tons; dolomite, 3,390 tons; limestone, 20,253 tons; serpentine, 35,449 tons – the annual value of mineral production is approximately £200,000. This activity is important to the local economy and contributes a little towards saving overseas exchange. In addition 20,925 tons of coal, representing 0·66 per cent of the national production, were mined at Collingwood and near Murchison in 1960. The region is one of the main mineraliferous zones of the Dominion and hopes are naturally concentrated here, especially, because of the rather undiversified structure of the local economy. But even though the stage of geological mapping is primitive, the prospect of discovering important deposits is authoritatively discounted.

The valleys and lower-lying areas contain almost the whole of the region's population, but, even within the valleys, marked concentrations of settlement occur beside areas of much lower densities. This is particularly true of Waimea county, where the intensively farmed areas around Richmond and Motueka contrast with the sparsely settled lands of the Moutere gravels. These Pleistocene gravels cover some 135,000 acres in Waimea county (they continued further south to Lake Rotoiti and the Hope Saddle) and extend as a band of country some 12 miles broad through the centre of the county, from Tophouse and Glenhope in the south, at an altitude of over 2,000 ft, to Tasman and Mapua on the coast. They can be visualised as a surface sloping towards Tasman Bay, which represents the bed of some ancient river system, now dissected by the rivers Wairoa, Wai-iti, Motueka, and their tributaries. Their notoriety derives from the leached soil, poor in organic material, which makes farming difficult, so that their farming history has been marked by some conspicuous failures; failures attested to by the deteriorated quality of the pastures over large areas and the decline in carrying capacity, the increase of erosion, and the conversion of much of the land to plantations of exotic conifers of which the State plantation at Golden Downs is the largest (net area planted, 29,292 acres). Of the total acreage of the gravels located in Waimea county, it was calculated in 1952 that 30 per cent was under native or exotic timber, 25 per cent was in partly reverted pasture, the degree of reversion varying from slight to bad, and another 25 per cent was in pasture which had fully reverted to bracken and second growth. A mere 14 per cent was classified as improved pasture and cultivated area. As this land occupies a third of Waimea county's area, its deterioration could not be ignored and, in the post-war period, much consideration has been given to its improved use and potentialities. With the right type of management and with finance made available some measure of success has already been obtained. The most successful adaptation to the gravels has been made in the coastal regions where, largely since the First World War, orchards have been established over some 2,500 acres of land. This section of the Moutere gravels is best considered, however, as part of the localised and densely settled special-crop district of Waimea county.

The Nelson region is located at the north-western end of the South Island between Tasman Bay in the east and Golden Bay in the west and could be contained within a square 50 by 50 miles, the major portion of its western part being mountainous and inaccessible. In extent the region corresponds to the limits of Waimea county and Golden Bay county, which has incorporated the former counties of Takaka and Collingwood. Nelson (urban area population, 25,321, 1961) is the principal city of the region, which contained in 1961 a total population of 48,538 (2 per cent of the New Zealand total population) of which 1·81 per cent were registered as Maoris.

The major trends of the past half century have been the disproportionate growth of Nelson City and Motueka borough and the relative stability of the towns of Westport and Reefton. The population of the provincial district was 48,463 in 1911, 69,111 in 1956 and 74,281 in 1961. In the Tasman Bay lowlands, farming has become more intensive and specialised, as the climatic endowments of high sunshine, mild temperatures, and freedom from strong winds have been utilised for the growing of cash crops of high value. These include tobacco, hops, raspberries, peas, vegetables, and pip fruits. Concentration on the better flat land for annual crops led to neglect of much of the poorer hill country and its general deterioration, particularly during the depression of the 1930s. Some 70,000 acres of reverted land on the Moutere Hills have been planted as State private exotic forests, but since the mid-1950s new areas of pasture land have been broken in with the use of machinery and heavy dressings of lime and fertiliser.

On the West Coast the population has declined since 1936. Quartz mining ceased when the Waiuta mine closed in 1951 and gold dredging in the Grey Valley ceased shortly afterwards. The Reefton district turned from quartz to coal mining in the 1920s and settlement has been relatively stable there, but the Buller coalfield suffered severe curtailment of its markets during the 1950s. There has been a marked migration away from the district as well as a tendency for settlement to concentrate in Westport, leading to the near abandonment of some of the coalfields settlements.

The Nelson Provincial District has long comprised two communities of rather distinct social characteristics. In the Tasman Bay area a large proportion of the population is descended from the predominantly English settlers of the 1840s, but there has been a significant flow to Nelson City of retired people attracted by the climate. There is also a marked seasonal inflow of holiday makers in midsummer and of seasonal labourers, mainly from the North Island, for crop harvesting between January and April. The West Coast portion of the province, on the other hand, was first settled by gold miners and the high proportion of Irish has been reflected in the high proportion of Roman Catholics. Later migration to the coalfields and quartz mines brought groups of Scots, Welsh, Cornishmen, and Australians.

by Murray McCaskill, M.A., PH.D., Reader in Geography, University of Canterbury.

• History of the Port of Nelson, Allan, R. M. (1954)
• The Amuri, Gardner, W. J. (1956)
• Jubilee History of Nelson, Broad, L. (1892)
• Vanguard of the South, Brereton, C. B. (1952)
• Nelson: A History of Early Settlement, Allan, Ruth M. (1965).

In 1874 the provincial population was 22,558. By 1911 it was 48,400. Consolidation of settlement had taken place on the agricultural lands of Tasman Bay. Hops were a significant export and a speculative orchard-planting boom was in full swing on the coastal spurs of the Moutere Hills. Some 7,000 acres of land were planted in fruit trees by syndicates between 1911 and 1916 but the horticultural experience of the settlers and the size of the export markets were overestimated. Ultimately a flourishing orchard industry stabilised at some 2,500 acres on the hills and another 1,200 acres on the flats. Farmers in the wetter Golden Bay district were now turning from mixed farming to specialise in dairying. To the south of Tasman Bay the valleys had been occupied by small farmers – in many cases sons of the first Nelson settlers – in the 1890s. By 1911 dairying had been established on the valley flats, and the timbered hills were being cleared for sheep grazing – a process which in many places was to end in widespread reversion to fern, gorse, and scrub.

The population map for 1911 shows that marked changes had taken place since 1874 in the density of settlement in the Amuri district. Under the impetus of the Liberal Government's land policy, the large freehold sheep runs had been parcelled up into medium-sized arable and livestock farms on the plains and downlands and into grazing runs on the steeper, unploughable land. The pattern was set by the purchase by the Government in 1893 of the famous 84,000-acre Cheviot estate for the sum of £260,000. The area was subdivided into 104 farms and 26 small grazing runs. By 1915 five more estates in the Amuri had been subdivided by the Government while the others were gradually fragmented through private sales or division amongst members of the families of the original landowners. The pattern of land use and settlement in the Amuri district thus belatedly came to resemble that of Canterbury, and to the majority of the new settlers the link with Nelson was but a matter of history.

The West Coast area of the provincial district experienced something of a second golden age early this century. Technical improvements in quartz mining, accompanied by an infusion of British capital and more vigorous management, brought about a revival of lode-gold mining at Reefton. Coal production also increased greatly in response to New Zealand's growing demand for fuel in industry and transport. The Buller coalfield attained its maximum output in 1910 and its peak population in 1911. A substantial migration of young Australian miners to the Greymouth and Buller coalfields and the Reefton quartz mines occurred in the first decade of the century, and the radical political outlook of the district was in part related to the influence of this group. Sawmilling was also established by now in the Grey Valley and in the coastal terraces near Westport.

The West Coast of Nelson Province was neglected and scarcely known for almost 20 years after the settlement of Tasman Bay. It first excited curiosity late in 1859 when small samples of alluvial gold were discovered in the Buller Gorge by a survey party under J. Rochfort. Vigorous exploratory activity followed in 1860 when provincial government parties were sent to find routeways, map the Buller coalfield, report on timber and mineral resources, and examine potential sites for settlement. A few miners from Golden Bay came by sea to the Buller in 1861 and won small quantities of gold from the river beaches, while in 1863 the open country in the central Grey Valley was taken up in three pastoral runs. The main inrush of the mining population took place in the extreme south of the province in July 1865 when diggers crossed from what were then the west Canterbury goldfields, spread up the Grey Valley and its numerous tributary creeks, and within 12 months were prospecting in the Inangahua Valley. In the spring of 1866 a large rush occurred to the terraces and beaches of the Buller coast plain. Three bustling mining camps, Charleston, Brighton, and Addisons, each of more than 1,000 people, sprang up within a few months. Charleston, with 1,800 people at the 1867 census, was then the second largest urban centre in Nelson Province. Until 1870 only alluvial gold had been worked on the West Coast but in that year gold-bearing quartz lodes were discovered in the hills east of Reefton and at Lyell. A steady flow of population set in to the Reefton district from the declining alluvial diggings and, despite great difficulties presented by the terrain and bush cover, machinery was established on the lodes by 1873. Quartz mining was a more stable basis for settlement than alluvial gold working. The most productive years at Reefton came in the decade after 1900 and new lodes were discovered in the district as late as 1920.

In Nelson, as in Canterbury, the special administrative needs of new mining districts remote from the provincial capital were met, between 1865 and 1868, by granting wide discretionary powers in local government to a nominated official. Nelson was fortunate in its choice of T. A. Sneyd Kynnersley as commissioner of the south-west goldfields. A young former naval officer, Kynnersley displayed remarkable skill and energy in dealing with a roving community of high spirited and independent gold diggers. His popularity, together with the provincial government's willingness to spend money on public works on the goldfields, were probably the main reasons why the Nelson south-west goldfields remained harmoniously attached to the parent province when Westland was agitating for separation from Canterbury.

Nelson Province did not share to any great extent in the colonial public works and immigration developments of the 1870s. Some 1,800 assisted immigrants came to the province, including several hundred to a government-sponsored farm settlement at Karamea on the West Coast. The gold rushes, however, had drawn attention to the bituminous coal resources of the Buller and Greymouth coalfields; the first spasmodic mining had been to supply fuel for steamers in the goldfields trade. A major expansion of coal mining came in the 1880s, the capital being subscribed largely in Dunedin. Within the Buller district a regrouping of population occurred as gold-mining townships on the coastal plain decayed and new coal-mining settlements were established on the high and rainswept plateau north of Westport. The labour force for coal mining was supplied not so much from the ranks of the gold diggers as by direct immigration, over a long period, of family groups from the coalfields of Great Britain.

As devised by its New Zealand Company sponsors, the Nelson settlement was to consist of 221,000 acres divided into 1,000 allotments of 201 acres, to sell at £300 per allotment. An additional 100 allotments were intended as native reserves. Each allotment comprised a “package deal” of three geographically separated sections of land – 1 town acre, 50 “suburban” acres, and 150 “rural” acres. As the location of a purchaser's sections was to be fixed by lottery following survey, the “compact and contiguous” settlement envisaged by E. G. Wakefield would be achieved only if the majority of allotments were sold and occupied promptly. The plans were made with no particular site in mind and, although they might have been applicable to a large plain such as Canterbury, were hopelessly ill-adapted to the terrain of the northern South Island with its fragmented pockets of flat land, infertile hill soils, and extensive mountain tracts. The choice of Tasman Bay (then known as Blind Bay) for the site of the Nelson settlement was a hasty compromise. The Company's officials in London hoped to select the grassy plains of the Port Cooper district (later to become Canterbury), but when the advance party arrived in New Zealand Governor Hobson insisted that the settlement be located either in the Cook Strait area on lands already included in the Company's purchase from the Maoris, or on an alternative site near Auckland. Little time could be afforded for exploration, and a hasty reconnaissance of Blind Bay failed to reveal more than a fraction of the 200,000 or so acres of good agricultural land required by the planners of the settlement. However, a port of a kind, behind a long boulder bank, was found to be within ready communication with the small Waimea Plain, and there the new settlers were landed in 1842.

The 50-acre “suburban” sections were laid out on the fern- and scrub-covered Waimea Plain, the Motueka-Riwaka flats, and the northern slopes of the Moutere Hills, but the 150-acre sections were not available until the purchase and survey of the Wairau Plain after 1847. The Nelson settlement had its share of infantile troubles. The population built up rapidly to 2,940 in 1843 but then grew slowly to 3,370 in 1849. Only 40 of the original land purchasers took up their holdings which were scattered amongst unsold lands or those bought by absentee speculators. Most of the immigrants were unskilled labourers, induced to emigrate, no doubt, by the company's assurance of work at reasonable wages until the landowners were able to give employment on their farms. In the event there were few employers, and after much suffering and near starvation it was decided to abandon one of the fundamental “Wakefield plan” tenets and give unsold land for labourers to work without any payment on their part. Finally a deferred payment plan was devised for purchase of small holdings, and the Waimea and Motueka Plains came to be settled predominantly by a “cottier” class of small farmers. Subsistence farming gave way to a mixed livestock, cereal, and potato-growing economy and the small size of holdings encouraged the adoption of crops with a high return per acre. The few men of means in the Nelson settlement preferred to invest their money in sheep farming in the distant grasslands of the Wairau, Awatere, and Amuri, while the lowlands of Tasman Bay became the most intensively settled rural district in New Zealand.

In 1861, of the overseas-born population of Nelson Province, 75 per cent were English, 12 per cent Scottish, and only 5 per cent Irish. Most of the English came from the vicinity of London. A small but significant German contingent among the emigrants of the mid-1840s settled in the Moutere Valley. They were represented in the 4 per cent of the Nelson population who were of Lutheran denomination in the 1861 census – the highest percentage of adherents of this church ever recorded in any province. One feature of Nelson's provincial organisation which had wider implications in New Zealand was its educational system. Its Educational Ordinance of 1856 provided for a school rate of £1 a year on every householder and that “religious instruction, when given, shall be free from all controversial character” and should be given at such times that children could stay away from it. Several other provinces borrowed much of their legislation from the Nelson ordinance and the influence of the province in hastening the movement towards universal public education in New Zealand was substantial.

From Tasman Bay the settlers fanned out in two directions; north-west to Massacre (later Golden Bay), and east and south-east to the Wairau and Amuri. Golden Bay was first settled at Takaka in 1845. The district developed slowly with small-scale farming and timber milling, and spasmodic coal mining until a small gold rush to the Aorere Valley brought in some 300 diggers in 1857. This event turned the thoughts of Nelson people to the possible mineral wealth elsewhere in the province. A few pastoralists quickly established a skeleton occupation and were able to entrench themselves in vast estates with no competition from outside. Between 1859 and 1866 virtually all the plain and downland was bought at between 5s. and 10s. per acre, leasehold areas on the mountains being isolated by carefully selected freehold purchases. The area thus became the stronghold of some of New Zealand's wealthiest and best-known “wool kings” of the seventies and eighties. In 1874, the date of the last census before abolition of the provinces, there were only 350 people in the district.

As originally delimited in 1853, the Province of Nelson comprised the whole of the South Island north of the Hurunui River to its source, thence along a line to Lake Brunner and the mouth of the Grey River. Before the provincial boundaries were drawn, there was pressure from the Canterbury settlement to have lands north of the Huruni included within the Canterbury Province. Governor Grey, however, who had full powers to draw the boundaries as he wished, was determined to limit Canterbury, probably because of his distaste for its “exclusive” social character and its policy of high-priced land. In 1859 the north-eastern portion of Nelson was detached to become the Province of Marlborough but the east coast district known as the Amuri – between the Conway and Hurunui Rivers – remained part of Nelson, probably because the size of any new province was arbitrarily limited to 3 million acres. In later years there has been much popular confusion as to the definition of the Nelson district. The provincial district is coextensive with the province as at the time of abolition in 1876. The Nelson Land District, an administrative division of the Department of Lands and Survey, is smaller; the Amuri area is included with the Canterbury Land District, and the Grey Valley with the Westland Land District.

The nucleus of Nelson Province was the Tasman Bay lowland, the site of the second organised settlement of the New Zealand Company. Economically this area has always been characterised by small-scale intensive farming. The outlying areas have had only tenuous economic and social links with the heart of the province. The Amuri was early parcelled into a few large sheep runs and had few people until the end of the nineteenth century. Its commercial links have been with Christchurch rather than Nelson, and today few people there are aware of any former community of interest with Nelson. The West Coast portion of the province was first peopled by gold miners from west Canterbury who, although not hostile to government from Nelson, had little concern for provincial sentiment or institutions. Between Tasman Bay and these outlying areas of settlement lay an extensive forested and mountainous zone whose narrow valleys were occupied by a few prospectors and cattle farmers until dairy farming developed at the end of the nineteenth century.

stands on the shores of Nelson Haven, a sheltered inlet at the head of Tasman Bay separated from the open sea by a natural breakwater about 8 miles long. The city extends over small flats southwards from Nelson Haven and is enclosed on all quarters, except the north, by hills. Tahunanui and Stoke are the suburbs. A branch railway formerly ran to Glenhope (59 miles south-west), but the track was taken up in 1956. By road Nelson is 73 miles north-east of Blenheim and 81 miles north-east of Murchison. It is 101 miles westwards by sea from Wellington. After centralisation of shipping was introduced in 1943, the port was used only by coastal vessels and tankers until 1951, when improvements made it possible for overseas ships to load and unload. Goods handled in 1964 totalled 292,677 tons. Motor spirits are the main import, while fruit, frozen meat, and timber are exported directly overseas. The Nelson Harbour Board also maintains the small coastal port of Mapua, which exports mainly fresh fruit. Inside the mouth of the Motueka River there is a small port, also exporting fresh fruit. There is a privately owned cement-loading installation at Tarakohe, in Golden Bay. Nelson, Motueka, and Golden Bay are fishing ports. Nelson Airport, 3 miles south-west of the city, is used by freight and passenger aircraft.

Rural activities of the district include hop and tobacco growing, small-fruit farms (mainly raspberries), dairying, fruitgrowing (apples, peaches, and pears), vegetable growing (mainly peas and tomatoes), and sheep farming. Forestry plays a large part in the economy of the province. There are 68,000 acres of exotic trees in the Waimea county. Golden Downs (46 miles south-west) is the second largest State forest in New Zealand. There is a wide range of minerals in the region, the main ones being asbestos, clays and feldspars, dolomite, limestone, marl and marble, magnesite and talc, serpentine and dunite, and wollastonite. Nelson is a servicing centre and holiday resort, and its climate has made it a favoured place for retirement. Nelson's secondary industries include meat freezing, sawmilling, tanning, cordial and aerated-water manufacturing, fruit and vegetable processing, jam, biscuit, and confectionery making, cool storage, and general engineering.

Nelson is noted for its educational institutions. Nelson College was established in 1856 and Nelson Girls' College in 1883. The Cawthron Institute is the largest private applied-research institution in New Zealand. It was endowed by Thomas Cawthron, a Nelson citizen, who left £240,000 for the purpose. Soil science is its main work, but it is also concerned with plant chemistry, trace-element research, fungus disease, insect pest and noxious weed control.

Tasman Bay was discovered by the Dutch navigator, Abel Tasman, who anchored near its eastern shores at or near Admiralty Bay on 25 December 1642. Captain Cook sailed across the mouth of Tasman and Golden Bays in 1770 and named them Blind Bay. In January 1827 the French commander, d'Urville, spent several days at what are now called Astrolabe Roads, a few miles north of the port of Motueka. The first party of Nelson settlers, under Captain Arthur Wakefield, arrived in the ships Whitby, Will Watch, and Arrow on 9 October 1841. On 20 October Nelson Haven was found and chosen as the place for the settlement. In the following year more immigrants arrived. Some went to Golden Bay, others spied out the land up the Waimea Valley, along the shore of Tasman Bay, and along the Motueka River. Here the bush was lighter and they carved out small holdings and ultimately established small mixed farms. Further agricultural land was required and surveyors were sent to the Wairau Valley to prepare the way for settlement. The outcome was the “Wairau Affray” (q.v.), when Wakefield's party was overwhelmed by Te Rauparaha. This tragedy retarded the growth of Nelson for several years.

A new impetus to expansion came in 1857 with the discovery of gold at Collingwood, followed in the mid-sixties by the great rushes to the West Coast. The influx of miners greatly stimulated the progress of agriculture and for many years this part of the Nelson district was the major source of foodstuffs for the new communities further south. By the 1880s the orchard yields were sufficient to establish fruit-preserving and jam-making industries, and early in the following century an export trade in apples commenced. In 1858 Queen Victoria ordained that Nelson be a bishop's see and constituted it a city by letters patent. Nelson, however, did not attain borough status until 1874. The city is named in honour of Admiral Lord Nelson.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 20,497; 1956 census, 22,503; 1961 census, 25,321.

by Susan Bailey, B.A., Research Officer, Department of Industries and Commerce, Wellington.

(1846–1926).

Journalist, social reformer, and nurse.

A new biography of Neill, Elizabeth Grace appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Elizabeth Grace Neill was born on 26 May 1846 in Edinburgh. Her father was James Archibald Campbell, one-time colonel of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and later, on his retirement, deputy lieutenant of the county of Argyllshire and colonel of militia in that area. Grace Campbell was the eldest daughter of nine children by his second wife, Maria Grace, née Cameron, of Barcaldine. She was brought up in a household where disciplined intelligence was valued and received her formal education partly at home and partly at a private school in Rugby. She had a brilliant mind and would undoubtedly have done well if her father had consented to her studying medicine but his disapproval fortunately resulted in her becoming a “paying probationer” nurse in the St. John's House Sisterhood in London which supplied staff both for the King's College and for Charing Cross Hospitals. Grace Campbell completed her training in general nursing and midwifery and then was appointed lady superintendent at the Pendlebury Hospital for Children, near Manchester, where she remained for two years until she married Dr Channing Neill. For a short period they lived in Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, where her only son, J. O. C. Neill, was born.

In 1886, Grace Neill and her four-year-old boy joined Dr Neill in Australia where he had established a practice. When her husband died in 1888 she turned to journalism to earn a living and was for a time sub-editor of the Boomerang and a freelance journalist for the Brisbane Daily Telegraph and the Courier. In 1891 she was appointed by the Queensland Government to a Royal Commission on working conditions for shop and factory workers. It was her knowledge of the problems inherent in the giving of charitable aid, combined with her work as a journalist, which ultimately led to her appointment in 1893 as the first woman Inspector of Factories in New Zealand. In 1894 she again served on a Royal Commission to inquire into the Administration of Charitable Aid in Canterbury. This was followed by her appointment as Assistant Inspector in the Department in charge of hospitals, asylums, and charitable aid, which was headed at that time by Dr Duncan McGregor. When Dr Frank Hay was appointed as first assistant in this Department and a separate Department of Health was established, Grace Neill was able to devote herself to providing a suitable nursing service for New Zealand.

At this time, Mrs Neill, tall, redheaded, and unconventional, had conceived the idea of a register for trained nurses, which would protect the public and the profession from malpractice by unqualified persons. In 1901 the Bill which she helped Dr McGregor to draft was passed by Parliament and became the first Nurses' Registration Act in the world. This Bill provided for a three-year course of training, a State examination, and a State register for nurses. While this led to registration for general trained nurses, the position of midwives was still anomalous. It was imperative that a means of training midwives in New Zealand be established and that they should also be registered. Accordingly, the Midwives' Registration Act was introduced to Parliament by Richard Seddon in 1904 and was passed almost without amendment, which was a triumph in view of the opposition at that time from such organisations as the British Medical Association. Seddon then initiated the setting up of the first State maternity hospital which was intended to serve both as a “lying-in” hospital for the wives of the working class and as a training school for midwives. Grace Neill was given three weeks in which to find and equip a suitable house and the first hospital opened in Rintoul Street, Wellington, in June 1905. It was called St. Helen's Hospital, after Seddon's birthplace in Lancashire, England. This was followed by the opening of St. Helen's Hospitals in Dunedin (1905), Auckland (1906), and Christchurch (1907). These hospitals have since played an important part in the development of care for maternity patients.

Mrs Neill's activities during her period in office were not confined only to New Zealand. In 1899 she attended a Congress of the International Council of Women in London, where she was principal speaker in the nursing section. At this congress she was made an honorary member of the Matrons' Council of Great Britain, and subsequently served on a committee which drafted the constitution and bylaws for the International Council of Nurses. In 1901 her specialised knowledge of social conditions again proved useful when she investigated the administration of charitable aid in Sydney for the Government of New South Wales. At the end of 1906 she resigned her position with the New Zealand Government and joined her son in the United States but her health, which had been poor for some time, did not improve and they both returned to New Zealand in 1909. During the First World War she was sister in charge of the Children's Ward at Wellington Hospital. She died after a long period of illness on 18 August 1926. In memory of her services to the people of New Zealand, and to the nurses in particular, the Grace Neill Memorial Library was established at the Nurses' Postgraduate School in Wellington.

Grace Neill was essentially a social reformer. Her early upbringing had trained her to be independent and broadminded and these qualities she brought to bear on the social problems of her day both in New Zealand and in Australia. She was deeply interested in women's suffrage, and her ideas on the evils of indiscriminate relief to the poor were far in advance of those of her contemporaries. The reports that she wrote when Inspector of Factories give a succinct picture of the poor working conditions at that time and must have contributed to the subsequent social reforms which took place. She estimated the needs of New Zealand in terms of nursing service and was largely responsible for the legislation which protected the public from malpractice and at the same time laid a sound foundation for the subsequent development of nurses as a professional group.

by Nancy Joan Kinross, B.A.(N.Z.), M.SC.(BERKLEY), N.Z.DIP.NURSING, Supervising Matron, Southland Hospital, Invercargill.

• Historical Development of Nursing in New Zealand, 1840–1946, New Zealand Department of Health (1947)
• Grace Neill, Neill, J. O. C. (1961)
• The New Zealand Nursing Journal, 15 Jun 1946, “Grace Neill”, Campbell, Helen.

(Argonauta nodosa).

The animal of this exquisite shell is a near relative of the octopus. It is similar to the octopus in most respects, except that the female produces the delicate, pure white embossed shell which at times reaches a size of 10 in. The shell is exclusive to the female and she uses it to house the egg mass. The male Argonauta is completely overshadowed by the female, for he is only about an inch in length and does not possess a shell.

These shells are scarcely ever seen on mainland beaches, but at times they are found in considerable numbers on off-shore islands.

by Arthur William Baden Powell, Assistant Director, Auckland Institute and Museum.