(1836–1905).

Scientist and university professor.

A new biography of Hutton, Frederick Wollaston appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Frederick Wollaston Hutton was born in Lincolnshire in November 1836. His father was the Rev. H. F. Hutton, vicar of Gate Burton. After attending Southwell Grammar School and the Royal Naval Academy at Gosport, Hutton served for three years as a midshipman and then fought in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. In 1865, after studying geology for the army at Sandhurst, he sailed with his wife and two children to New Zealand. Following a brief attempt at flaxmilling in the Waikato district he took up science. His early years as a geologist in New Zealand were spent in the field, first for the Geological Survey, under Sir James Hector, and later as Provincial Geologist of Otago.

But Hutton's real talents lay in laboratory research and in lecturing, and in 1877 he was appointed Professor of Natural Science to the newly established Otago University. Three years later he became Professor of Biology at Canterbury College and, in 1893, Curator of the Canterbury Museum. His gentle manner and humility qualified him well as a scholar and leader of students. In 1905, after a holiday in England, he died on the return voyage on 27 October, and was buried somewhere west of the Cape of Good Hope.

Hutton stands with Hector and Haast in a select trilogy as one of the most important contributors to geology and biology in nineteenth century New Zealand. His interests covered many fields, ranging from economic reports on goldfields and descriptions of rocks, to the geological nature of many areas in New Zealand; but his chief achievement lay in the systematic descriptions of fossil and living shells and other animals, summarised in his Index Faunae Novae-Zealandiae.

Hutton also wrote two books, Darwinism and Lamarckism, Old and New (1899) and The Lesson of Evolution (1902). In these works he staunchly defended Darwin's ideas against a growing dissatisfaction among fellow scientists, and at the same time he asserted his faith in a Creator against such materialist philosophers as Spencer.

Hutton was an acute observer, able to summarise tersely his observations. He was not in the first rank of scientists, for he achieved no vast synthesis of knowledge or gain in perspective, but he strove faithfully to fill in the groundwork of science with his “postage stamp” observations, for someone else to synthesise, and furthermore, he sought to relate his science to the significance of life itself.

by John Bruce Waterhouse, M.SC.(N.Z.), PH.D. (CANTAB.), New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

• A History of the University of Otago (1809–1919). Thomson, G. E. (1921)
• A Short History of the Canterbury College, Hight, J., Candy, A. M. F. (1927)
• New Zealanders and Science, Jenkinson, S. H. (1940)
• Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, Vol. 38 (1906) (Obit).

Although a very small river (catchment area 250 sq. miles), the Hutt is very important, supplying as it does most of the municipal water supplies for the Wellington region. The Hutt itself rises in the heavily forested southern Tararua Range. The large tributaries, Pakuratahi and Mangaroa, rise in the north-eastern Rimutaka Ranges, and the Akatarawa and Whakatikei Rivers rise in the forested areas of the Wainui and Maymorn Ridges. After the Hutt descends from the Tararua Range it flows seawards in the fault angle depression of the Wellington Fault, passing through two tectonic basins in the Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt Valley: a third tectonic basin lies in the lower course of the Pakuratahi, and other basins are on the lower and upper reaches of the Mangaroa River.

The Pakuratahi River, after flowing through the tectonic basin, passes into a gorge in the main range greywacke before it joins the Hutt, having been superposed on to this course, at the close of the first Pleistocene glaciation, from an extensive, deeply aggraded valley plain. A thickness of some 900 ft of gravels was laid down during this glaciation in the Kaitoke region of the Hutt Valley.

Wellington City has established a water intake on the Hutt just above its confluence with the Pakuratahi, and takes at present 11,000,000 gallons of water a day, with a planned expansion to 22,000,000 gallons a day. Below the Taita Gorge a small artesian basin in the Lower Hutt Valley has its recharge area in the permeable gravels of the river bed. This artesian basin, supplying the whole of the water requirements of Lower Hutt and Petone, discharges through a thin sediment cover into the sea between Point Howard and Ward Island.

In 1939 the minimum flow was gauged at 39,500,000 gallons per day, of which about 33,000,000 gallons per day flowed underground. The peak measured flood was 71,000 cu. ft. per second in 1939, the greatest flood in living memory, when the valley at Silver-stream at the lower end of the Upper Hutt Basin was flooded from wall to wall. The river rose some 20 ft at Maoribank and 14 ft at Lower Hutt.

As a result of changes due to settlement, with a consequent shallowing of the river, shingle plants were encouraged, and in 1961 extracted 214,269 tons of shingle and sand. This was about double the amount that was supplied to the river by erosion.

The European name was given by Colonel W. Wakefield in honour of Sir William Hutt, a prominent director and sometime chairman of the New Zealand Company. The Maori name is Heretaunga, perhaps of Hawke's Bay origin and applied to a carved house built near the site of Hastings by Whatonga.

by Thomas Ludovic Grant-Taylor, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

Under the law which New Zealand inherited in 1840, the legal status of married women was pithily summarised in the saying that husband and wife are one person and the husband is that person. Not until 1884 did married women acquire the general power to own property in their own right.

Today husband and wife are for most purposes treated as separate individuals, although in some cases the law does recognise their special relationship. Thus their incomes are in certain cases aggregated for taxation purposes. Although since 1936 a husband has not been liable for his wife's contracts or torts, a deserted wife may pledge her husband's credit for necessaries. The law of theft has no application between spouses living together. Before 1962 a husband and wife could not conspire together for the purposes of criminal law. Unless a separation decree or order is in force, a husband cannot sue his wife in tort, and a wife can sue her husband only to protect her property. However, legislation has been introduced (1963) which will enable spouses to sue each other in all cases.

The principal relic of the wife's legal subjection is the rule that, on marriage, a woman automatically acquires her husband's domicile and is incapable of possessing a separate domicile. Thus, if a New Zealander deserts his wife here and acquires a domicile in, say, Yugoslavia, her domicile is thenceforth Yugoslav, though she may never leave this country. As legal rights and capacities often depend on domicile, this can have serious consequences. The worst anomalies have been cured by legislation, but an attempt in 1959 to abolish the rule altogether was defeated by the opposition of a conservative legal profession.

by Bruce James Cameron, B.A., LL.M., Legal Adviser, Department of Justice, Wellington.

The Hurunui River in North Canterbury, catchment area 1,020 sq. miles, rises on the main divide of the Southern Alps and flows eastward to the Pacific Ocean. At its head is the Harper Pass (Hurunui Saddle), which leads to the valley of the Taramakau River and was the main route to the West Coast from Canterbury, both for Maori and for European, before the construction of the road over Arthur's Pass. In the headwaters of the river, which were strongly glaciated during the Pleistocene, are several lakes dammed by glacial moraines, of which the largest is Lake Sumner. A formerly glaciated tributary, the South Branch, joins the main river 8 miles below the lake. The other main tributaries are the Seaward, Mandamus, Waitohi, and Pahau Rivers. In the middle part of its course the river crosses the Culverden Plains, which were formed in part by gravel deposited by the Hurunui. Upstream from these plains the river has cut gorges through the hard greywacke of the Southern Alps and foothills; down stream it flows through two more greywacke gorges and across softer Tertiary siltstone and sandstone.

The meaning of the Maori name is obscure.

by Donald Rowe Gregg, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Christchurch.

The Hunua Ranges, roughly 25 miles south-east of Auckland City, extend from Firth of Thames in the east to almost the Great South Road in the west. Together with the lower Waikato River they form a natural geographical boundary between North Auckland and South Auckland Land Districts. The Hunua Ranges are essentially a series of tilted, fault-bounded Mesozoic argillite blocks capped by remnants of Tertiary rocks consisting of sandstones, siltstones, limestones, and coal measures. Following Late Tertiary block faulting, the lower lying areas in the west and south were filled with thick alluvial sediments, and basaltic volcanics were erupted at points along the numerous fault planes. The topographic expression is subdued in the vicinity of Waikato River, but rises progressively northeastwards to a maximum elevation of 2,200 ft in “The Thousand Acre Clearing”, beyond which the ranges are terminated by the Firth of Thames.

The Hunua Ranges first came into scientific prominence in January 1859, when a combined expedition of geologists, zoologists, botanists, and surveyors made a brief excursion along the western flanks to Mangatawhiri River where they embarked in three canoes and descended to the Waikato. The geologists of the party, Ferdinand von Hochstetter and Julius von Haast, reported on a coal seam, which was later mined at Drury. Continued mining and prospecting proved, however, that reserves were limited and were sufficient to yield only 8,000 tons before mining was finally abandoned in 1935. In addition to coal, manganese, limestone, and pumicite have been worked on a small scale, and road metal and concrete aggregate are at present being quarried at selected localities.

Perhaps the most notable economic feature of the Hunuas, however, is their contribution to Auckland's water supply. The final stages of the vast construction programme that will result in a total catchment area of 28,000 acres, a reservoir storage of 15,000 million gallons, and a safe mean yield of 68 million gallons per day, is now in hand, and when completed will, in conjunction with the yield from the Waitakere Ranges, ensure adequate supplies of water for Auckland City and suburbs at least for the immediate future.

by Barry Clayton Waterhouse, New Zealand Geological Survey, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Otahuhu, Auckland.

Huntly is situated on the banks of the Waikato River in the low-lying lower basin. The borough occupies a long narrow strip of land on each side of the river. The western side of the river is here called Huntly West. The North Island Main Trunk railway and the Auckland-Hamilton highway pass through the town. By road Huntly is 61 miles south-east of Auckland (65 miles by rail) and by road and rail 21 miles north-west of Hamilton. A branch railway to Glen Afton (9 miles south-west) joins the North Island Main Trunk line at Huntly and serves various colliery towns en route.

Sheep and cattle raising and dairy farming are the main rural activities of the district. There is a butter factory at Taupiri (5 miles south-west). The district includes the northern part of the Waikato Coalfield and there are both underground and opencast mines along the branch railway at or near Weavers Crossing (3 miles north-west), Mahuta (5 miles south-west), Renown Siding and Rotowaro (both 6 miles south-west), and at Glen Afton. Coal is mined by opencast methods from the drained portions of the bed of Lake Kimihia (about 7 miles north-east). Carbonettes are manufactured at Rotowaro from slack coal. Town industrial activities include the manufacture of bricks and fireclay products, agricultural and earthmoving machinery, joinery, fertilisers, and women's garments; sawmilling, general engineering, and coalmining.

In the early 1850s a mission station was established at Kaiotehe, on the western bank of the Waikato River opposite Taupiri, by the Rev. B. Y. Ashwell. It is stated that Ashwell was the first to use coal from local outcrops for fuel. After 1863 the Waikato River gunboats used coal from outcrops at or near Huntly. The battle of Rangiriri, the first major engagement of the Waikato War, took place some 9 miles north of Huntly in November 1863. Wahi (2 miles north-west), on the western bank of the Waikato River, was a chief settlement of the Waikato Tribe until the death of Rata Mahuta Potatau te Wherowhero in 1933. Huntly grew as a coal-mining centre. The industry was established on a commercial basis about 1876 and the first mines were in and near the present borough. Ralphs Mine, at the site of the present town hall, was the scene of a tragic disaster in 1914 when 43 miners lost their lives. Huntly became a town district in 1908 and in 1931 was constituted a borough.

The original owner of the land on which Huntly is situated was Alexander Henry, a former steward of the estates of the Duke of Gordon. Henry is credited with being the founder of the town which he named after his birthplace in Aberdeenshire.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 3,815; 1956 census, 4,187; 1961 census, 4,617.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

(1863–1958).

Dental surgeon and founder of the School Dental Service.

A new biography of Hunter, Thomas Anderson appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Sir Thomas Hunter was born in Dunedin on 10 February 1863, the son of Alexander Hunter, an engineer, who came to New Zealand with his wife (Mary Sime) from Leith, Scotland, in the ship Pladda in the early 1860s. Educated at the Otago Boys' High School, he chose dentistry as a career and, as was essential in those days, was apprenticed to a Dunedin dentist, becoming registered in 1881. It is a tribute to his industry that his long years of private practice in Dunedin from 1881 until 1914 are still remembered as a conscientious and distinguished contribution to his profession. His concept of dentistry, however, was wider than the confines of his own surgery and it is in the broad vision of a health service to the community that he will chiefly be remembered. He took an active part in the inauguration of the New Zealand Dental Association in 1905 and was elected its first president. This was an important advance in the status of his profession, but of even greater significance was his association with the late Sir Thomas Sidey in establishing the Otago University Dental School. Parliamentary legislation quickly followed and a university education became an essential qualification for the practice of dentistry. Hunter later endowed this school with £10,000 for research purposes. When the New Zealand Dental Corps was established in the First World War, Lieutenant-Colonel (later Colonel) Hunter was appointed as its first Director, for which service he was awarded the C.B.E.

The culmination of his idealism and the activity for which he will probably be chiefly remembered was the inauguration of the School Dental Nurse Scheme whereby girls were trained to give limited treatment to school children. This was begun in 1920 with Sir Thomas as the first Director and is probably as great a contribution to general health as that given by any Government to its people. It was a new concept, revolutionary in many respects, and it was due to his advocacy that it gained the full support of the New Zealand Dental Association. Since then it has been copied in other countries. For his services he received a knighthood in 1946 and a presentation by the New Zealand Dental Association of a bronze bust which stands as a permanent memorial in the entrance hall of the Dominion School for Dental Nurses in Wellington. The British Dental Association made him an honorary member and, as recently as 1950, he received a letter of commendation from the Royal College of Surgeons.

On 6 September 1927, in St. John's Church, Trentham, Hunter married Greta, daughter of Charles Alfred Ewen, of Heretaunga, a local banker. Sir Thomas died at Golf Road, Heretaunga, on 29 December 1958.

His lighter activities have been overshadowed by his intense occupation with his profession – so much so that it almost appears that his choice of a residence at Heretaunga, cheek by jowl with a notable golf course, his appearance in a photograph as captain of the Otago rugby touring team in 1887, and a conductor's baton inscribed “Glee Club 1905 T.A.H.” should be mentioned in a whisper. His whole life was dedicated to the improvement of dental health and to him, more than any other man, must go the credit for the high standard of private and public dentistry in New Zealand.

by Thomas Vernon Anson, B.D.S., Dental Surgeon and Author, Wellington.

• New Zealand Dental Journal, Vol. 55 (Apr 1959) (Obit)
• School Dental Service Gazette, Vol. 14 (Jan 1959) (Obit)

(1876–1953).

University teacher and educational administrator.

A new biography of Hunter, Thomas Alexander appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Thomas Alexander Hunter was born at Croydon, London, on 4 October 1876, the third son of William Hunter, a banker. He was brought as a child to Dunedin, where he was educated. At the University of Otago he was a senior scholar, and took his M.A. with first-class honours in mental and moral philosophy in 1899. He also became an expert and formidable footballer. After school teaching for some 10 years, during which time he also took part in some exploration in Southland, he was appointed in 1904 lecturer in mental science and political economy at Victoria University College, thus beginning an association of almost 50 years with the same institution. In the following year he married the beautiful Zella Pope; they had one son and two daughters. In 1906 he took the degree of M.Sc., and in 1907 went to America to study experimental psychology under Edward B. Titchener at Cornell; on his return he founded the first psychological laboratory in New Zealand and was made professor of philosophy and economics. In 1909 his chair was altered to philosophy and psychology, and this he retained till 1947.

Not merely was Hunter an enterprising and stimulating teacher, but he rapidly came to take a critical view of the New Zealand university system, and when the University Reform Association was set up in 1910 he was its secretary. He was not the first originator of the movement, but no man was more consistent and untiring in advocacy of it, long after its first impetus was spent and its first successes gained, and no man could more justly have claimed, in the end, to have been its leader. By the time of his death the battle was virtually won, though it was not till eight years later that the single examining University was finally transformed into four separate properly functioning institutions. In the meantime he had naturally begun to be interested in university administration; he was chairman of his own professorial board in 1911–12 and 1920–21 and a member of the college council 1917–21; and he was elected in 1912 to the University senate, on which he served, with one gap of a year, till 1950. His career, apart from the teaching side of it, may be described as a continuous pursuit of administrative efficiency, combined with a lively realisation that the administrator had to deal not merely with machinery but with human beings. When the University was reorganised under a new Act of 1926, it was hardly possible that any other man than Hunter could be appointed as vice-chancellor, and in this office he served from 1929 to 1947, in a valiant and not unsuccessful effort to get a system, of which he could not really approve, to work reasonably well. Similarly, when the increasing complexity of the business of his own college made urgent the appointment of a permanent academic head, he was the obvious choice in 1938 for principal. At the end of 1947 he vacated his chair to serve full time in this capacity, though by now his earlier vigour was declining.

Hunter's educational interests were not confined to the University; when the Workers' Educational Association was introduced to New Zealand in 1915, he immediately became one of its principal figures both as lecturer and as administrator. He was president of the Wellington branch, 1915–19. Like no one else he could gain the confidence of working-class leaders, and in his own classes had men like Peter Fraser; his advice, like the support he could gain for the movement in academic circles, was invaluable, and his influence continuous. He edited the short-lived New Zealand Highway (1925–28), the organ of the movement. As the basis of adult education was broadened throughout the country, its administration presented increasing problems, and Hunter played a considerable part in the work of a committee set up by the University senate, at the request of the Minister of Education, Peter Fraser, to recommend a better organisation. This was the origin of the Council of Adult Education (1938), of which he was the chairman till 1947, after which the structure was still further elaborated. When Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North, was founded in 1927 by the transference of chairs from both Auckland and Victoria University Colleges, Hunter, strongly in favour of the amalgamation, naturally became one of the governing body; he was chairman of the college from 1936 to 1938. But his longest period of continuous service, apart from that given to university institutions, was his chairmanship of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, founded in 1933 with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Hunter was one of its architects and he was at its head from its foundation to his death.

In 1939 Hunter was created K.B.E., to the pleasure of his colleagues, and in 1946, on his seventieth birthday, he was the recipient of the first festschrift ever presented to a New Zealand university teacher, the volume entitled The University and the Community, which attempted to reflect or parallel some of his own manysidedness and his own insistence on the social conscience. In 1949 the University of New Zealand made him an honorary Litt.D. He retired from the principalship of his college in 1951 with the title of Emeritus Principal, and died on 20 April 1953.

Hunter's free and critical mind, his willingness to argue, his hatred of injustice, ignorance, muddlement, waste and mere good intentions, his willingness to fight in any cause he thought a good one, however unpopular, his enthusiasm but lack of sentimentality, his disinterestedness, his ability as an administrator, inevitably made him enemies as well as friends. Devoted to reason, frankly secular in his approach to every problem, he was inevitably labelled both an atheist and a socialist. He was neither. There was nothing he distrusted more than rigidity of the mind or the easy acceptance of labels. This made him a first-rate teacher and a first-rate controversialist, though he was never a great or profound scholar in the professional sense. As an administrator he kept on a little too long, and his passion for carefully preparing his ground brought on accusations of too much indirectness. But in his long prime he was superb, and no honest enemy would ever deny his honesty any more than his courage. No man certainly ever did more for education, as a social and liberalising force, in New Zealand.

by John Cawte Beaglehole, C.M.G., M.A.(N.Z.), PH.D. (LOND.), Professor of British Commonwealth History, Victoria University of Wellington.

• The University of New Zealand, Beaglehole, J. C. (1937)
• Victoria University College, Beaglehole, J. C. (1949)
• Evening Post, 20 Apr 1953 (Obit).

The Huka Falls are the largest on the Waikato River and lie 3 miles below Taupo and 2 miles above Wairakei. The falls occur when the Waikato River, after flowing over a comparatively wide bed, is abruptly confined for about 250 yards to a narrow rock-bound chasm less than 50 ft wide. At the lower end the whole discharge of the river is precipitated over a cliff 35 ft high into a deep circular basin. The cliff or fall-maker is a band of silicified conglomerate forming part of a sequence of freshwater lake beds (Huka Beds) that cover the Wairakei-Taupo region to a depth of several hundred feet including the region tapped by the geothermal bores in the Wairakei geothermal field. The silicification of the conglomerate is due to ancient thermal activity depositing silica sinter at the ground surface. These hot springs are no longer in existence but shallow drilling has indicated that geothermal heat is still present at depth.

There is a good view of the falls from a loop road just off the main highway. A swing bridge, originally built during the Maori Wars, crosses the river and a path follows the east bank to various vantage points. The name “Huka”, meaning “foam”, is appropriate and the falls are awesome under flood conditions.

The Aratiatia Rapids lie 3 miles downstream of Wairakei where the Waikato River, in a distance of about half a mile, descends 300 ft across a series of hard ribs of rhyolite. Vertical bands of rhyolite line the walls of the gorge and are the skeletal parts of an ancient rhyolite volcano which has been uncovered by the river as it progressively cut down through the overlying blanket of soft pumice. The foaming torrent of the Aratiatia Rapids is now harnessed by the 90 MW Aratiatia Hydro Station situated at the foot of the rapids. The station is supplied from tunnels which have been driven through the hard rhyolite adjacent to the falls. These tap an artificial lake produced by a low dam at the top of the rapids. Except in periods of low water and peak power demand, sufficient water still passes down the rapids to provide a spectacular view for visitors. The best vantage points are the high rock bluffs that dominate the most turbulent stretch of the river.

The name Aratiatia means “Pathway of Stakes” -an allusion to the line of stakes which were driven into the cliff face for the assistance of travellers.

by George William Grindley, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

Huia (Heterolocha acutirostris) is a species belonging to the endemic family of wattle birds, which also includes the saddleback (Philesturnus carunculatus) and the kokako, or New Zealand “crow” (Callaeas cinerea). All three species are characterised by the possession of fleshy wattles at the base of the bill and all three have proved to be extremely sensitive to the changes that have occurred in their environments since European settlement. The numbers and range of the once widely spread saddleback and kokako have become severely reduced, but the huia, whose original distribution was limited to the eastern part of the southern half of the North Island, is believed to have been extinct since the first decade of the present century. Hunting by European and Maori has been blamed for this extinction, but it is probable that destruction or modification of the forests in which the huia lived has played at least an equally important part in its disappearance.

The most remarkable feature of the huia was the great difference between the sexes in the size and shape of the bill. That of the female was long, slender, and strongly curved into a sickle shape; that of the male was stouter, not so strongly curved, and only about two-thirds the length of the female's. The more powerful organ of the male permitted it to obtain insect larvae in soft or decaying wood in a manner similar to a woodpecker's, whereas the probe-like nature of the female's bill enabled her to reach larvae in holes and crevices. Spiders and fruits were also eaten.

In size huias were about as big as Australian magpies, and their plumage was wholly greenish black, except for a broad white band across the tip of the tail; the bill was ivory white, the wattles orange, and the legs and feet bluish-grey. Flight was weak, the birds progressing best by rapid and powerful bounds. Their calls have been described as a soft whistle, a low chirping, and a loud shrill whistle of alarm, from which the species gets its Maori name. Little is known of nesting habits. Two to four dark-spotted stone-grey eggs were laid in a large nest built fairly close to the ground.

Perhaps because of the unique differences between the bills of the two sexes, or because they were never abundant, huias were important to the Maori – their feathers (especially those of the tail) being used as adornments by chiefs. Beautifully carved boxes, waka-huia, were made and used solely for the storage of feathers.

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