Butterfish (Coridodax pullus), marari of the Maoris, is a kelp fish found throughout New Zealand, but most commonly in the south. It grows to about 20 in. in length, is purplish grey to olive green, lighter below. The fins are variegated with bright blue and the body is marbled and streaked with brown. An alternative name is “greenbone” from the fact that the bones and the flesh in contact with them are stained bright bluish-green. Of excellent flavour, it is keenly sought for on the market. A distinctive feature is the broad sweeping dorsal and anal fins.

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

(Ranunculus spp.).

New Zealand buttercups are renowned for the large sizes of some of their flowers and leaves. The delicate white or cream flowers, two or three inches across, of the Mt. Cook lily, R. lyallii, are a feature of some alpine vegetation throughout the Southern Alps. This species is one of over 40 occurring in New Zealand. The genus itself is a large one, containing over 300 species distributed throughout the world. Several of the European buttercups have been introduced to this country, and of these some have become serious weeds in damp pastures. Of the native species, four are found in Australia and Tasmania and one in Chile.

The alpine vegetation is the most common habitat for the native buttercups, especially the large-flowered ones. R. lyallii sends up saucer-like leaves, up to 9 in. across, from a thick root-stock. The beautiful flowers are borne on stout stalks a foot or more in height in late November, December, and January. R. godleyanus, from near the source of the Rakaia River southwards, with its yellow flowers, is nearly as attractive. R. nivicolus on Mount Egmont, with its golden-yellow flowers, is one of the striking features of that mountain. There are many other large-flowered mountain buttercups. Some are finding their way into cultivation and are being successfully hybridised. Natural hybrids between some species are also plentiful in the field.

Many smaller buttercups are also found in the mountains, and others are common in damp places in forest and throughout the lowlands. R. hirtus is probably the commonest and most widespread of these. It occurs in many forms, and is a hairy plant with three-foliate leaves and small flowers. Each leaflet is broadly ovate. Another very common species, found mainly in grassland and herbfield from sea-level to subalpine altitudes, is R. lappaceus. It also has many forms and is one of the species that extends to Tasmania and Australia.

R. chordorhizos, R. crithmifolius, and R. haastii are three buttercups belonging to that unique group of plants occurring on mountain screes. R. paucifolius is one of the rarest plants in the country. It has been found only on limestone rocks at Castle Hill, Waimakariri River.

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

(1835–1902).

Philosopher and author.

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

Butler was the son of the Rev. Thomas Butler, Rector of Langar, and grandson of Dr Samuel Butler, headmaster of Shrewsbury school and later Bishop of Lichfield. His mother was a Worsley of Bristol. Butler was born at Langar Rectory, Nottinghamshire, on 4 December 1835. He went to school at Allesley, near Coventry, and then to Shrewsbury. In 1854 he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and was bracketed twelfth in the classical tripos in 1858. He then began to prepare for ordination, becoming lay reader to the curate of St. James's, London. But his inability to take the church's teaching seriously led to a resolve to study art. This, however, did not meet with the approval of his father who held the purse strings and, after some stormy exchanges of opinion, funds were made available for his passage to New Zealand.

Butler arrived at Lyttelton aboard the Roman Emperor on 27 January 1860 having fortunately cancelled his berth in the Burmah which was lost at sea with all hands. He came with the intention of increasing his capital by sheep farming, but by the time he reached Lyttelton all the known sheep country in Canterbury had been taken up. In effect, he could either buy the goodwill of a sheep station at the current rate of £100 per 1,000 acres, or try to find unoccupied land which could be taken up at a cost of £1 per 1,000 acres. As he was uncertain of the extent to which his father was prepared to finance him, he decided to explore for land up the main river valleys – this at a time when they were very little known. He purchased a good horse and travelled to the headwaters of the Rakaia and the Waimakariri without success. He then explored Forest Creek, a tributary of the Rangitata River above its gorge, and on climbing a mountain at its head he was rewarded with a view of the extensive tussocked watershed of Bush Stream. Here were some 5,000 acres of unclaimed country and this – run 353 – he applied for on 16 April 1860. In May he added another 5,000 acres of unoccupied land on the southern slopes of the Sinclair Range, and in September he purchased Run 242 from E. Owen and J. Carter. He now owned the nucleus of his Mesopotamia Station, so called because it lay between Forest Creek, the Rangitata, and Bush Stream. Since the end of April he had been living with two or three companions in a primitive “V” hut up Forest Creek. But in October 1860 he moved to the present Mesopotamia homestead site where J. H. Caton's hut stood. Having bought the freehold of this site after an exciting race against Caton to the Christchurch Land Office, he built a sod and a cob cottage and lived there for the next three and a half years. He carted up a piano in a bullock dray, and with his books and pictures he created a small oasis of comfort and civilisation in this remote corner of Canterbury.

Besides farming, Butler, with J. H. Baker, explored the headwater tributaries of the Rangitata and Rakaia rivers. Together they discovered the Whitcombe Pass and were the first to cross it, though they did not descend on the western side. As a result of this trip Butler took over more land up the Rakaia above the Lake Stream. In March 1862 Butler took Brabazon into partnership and later the same year they were joined by Hoel Pattisson, first as a cadet and then as manager of the station. Butler was able to pay many and some prolonged visits to Christchurch, staying first at the Christchurch Club and, later, at the Carlton Hotel. During these visits he entered into the life of the young city, exhibiting at the Art Society's exhibition, presenting prizes at the Grammar School, speaking officially at the opening of the Lyttelton Tunnel, playing at a public concert, and writing for The Press. Butler's letters home and articles he wrote for the St. John's College Eagle were edited by his family and published in 1863 under the title A First Year in Canterbury Settlement. Butler himself disliked the book thinking it priggish, but it remains one of the best accounts of life in the colony at the time. The comments on all that met his eye show what a shrewd observer he was. Some of the articles he wrote for The Press, such as “Darwin Among the Machines”, (13 June 1863) contained the germ of Erewhon. Other essays he wrote first at Mesopotamia were expanded later into The Fair Haven.

By 1864 Butler was growing restive. He was spending more and more time in Christchurch. Urged on by Charles Pauli, whom he had met the previous year and with whom he was now on intimate terms, he decided to sell his sheep station and return to England. His financial capital had doubled, his health had greatly improved and his colonial experiences had stimulated fresh lines of thought which were to influence considerably his later literary works. In May 1864 he sold Mesopotamia Station to William Parkerson and in June left with Pauli in an American barque bound for Callao. Thence to London where they took rooms at Clifford's Inn. Here Butler devoted himself to the study of art, and during the next 10 years he exhibited 11 pictures at the Royal Academy. Six years after his return he was persuaded to piece together the articles he had already written, which with additions resulted in Erewhon, completed in 1871 and published anonymously the following year. The book at once produced great interest. The Fair Haven followed in 1873. With the exhibition of his most successful picture “Mr Heatherley's Holiday”, depicting his drawing master repairing the studio skeleton, and now in the Tate Gallery, he came to the parting of the ways. After the publication of Life and Habit in 1878, he painted no more except during his holidays and gave his whole time to writing and music.

Butler had left most of his money in New Zealand at 10 per cent interest but later invested in several new companies in Canada. In 1874–75 he spent some 18 months in Canada looking after the affairs of the Tanning Extract Co. of which he was a director. Between these investments, which proved disastrous, and Pauli, who was a continuing drain on his finances, Butler had managed to lose nearly all his capital by 1876. But he was now beginning to write prolificly and books appeared at regular intervals until his death. Evolution, Old and New, published in 1879, led to a prolonged and bitter controversy with Charles Darwin, in which Butler had the academic and scientific world united against him. He was a frequent visitor to Northern Italy and his Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino shows an intimate knowledge of the countryside and its history. The autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh was published posthumously in 1903. Butler never married. Painting, music, writing, and the company of his friends absorbed him until his death in a nursing home in London on 18 June 1902.

Physically Butler was a small man, dark with bushy eyebrows and a brick-dust complexion. Initiative, shrewdness, and courage were his in full measure, but he could not tolerate self-ridicule. In New Zealand he was quickly recognised as a man of remarkable talent. He remains probably the best-known author who has lived in this country. He has been described as the most versatile of iconoclasts and one of the most challenging figures of the Victorian scene. Intensely concerned with religion, yet completely unconventional, he subscribed to no orthodox doctrine and waged a lifelong battle with the conventional morality of his age. In much of his thinking he was ahead of his times and, as a result, his literary stature has continued to grow as the years pass.

by Peter Bromley Maling, G.M., M.SC.(N.Z.), M.B., B.S. (LOND.), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Medical Practitioner and Author, Christchurch.

• Samuel Butler, A Memoir, Jones, Festing (1919)
• The Cradle of Erewhon, Jones, Joseph (1959)
• Samuel Butler at Mesopotamia, Maling, P. B. (1960)
• The Family Letters of Samuel Butler 1841–86, ed. Silver, A. (1962)
• A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, ed. Brassington, A. C., and Maling, P. B. (1964).

(1781–1841).

Pioneer missionary and farmer.

John Gare Butler was born in March 1781. Nothing is known of his family background. In 1798 he married Hannah Hitchman. For many years they resided in Paddington, London, where Butler was clerk to a large London carrying company. He was honorary secretary of the Grand Junction and Canal Bible Association from its inception in 1816, the president being the Rev. Basil Woodd, a fervent evangelical pastor of Paddington. Butler, in anticipation of a career as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, was prepared by the Rev. John Bishop. He was ordained by the Bishop of Gloucester in 1818.

On 15 December 1818 Butler sailed from England with his wife and two children for New Zealand as superintendent designate of the Church Missionary Society's mission at the Bay of Islands. His son, Samuel, was then 18 years of age, and his daughter, Hannah, two. Accompanying them were James Kemp, a lay missionary, and his wife, their destination being also the Bay of Islands mission. On 26 June 1819 Butler arrived in Port Jackson in New South Wales. In due course the Rev. Samuel Marsden, supervisor of the New Zealand mission on behalf of the Church Missionary Society, accompanied the Butlers and Kemps to New Zealand in a chartered vessel, General Gates, which arrived at the Bay of Islands on 12 August 1819. While Butler was in New South Wales, Marsden prevailed on the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie, to appoint Butler as a Justice of the Peace for New Zealand, under date 24 July 1819. After Marsden and Butler arrived at the Bay of Islands, the offer of Hongi Hika, an influential chief, of land for a missionary settlement at Kerikeri was accepted. Marsden left for Port Jackson in November 1819. On 20 December the Butlers and Kemps took up residence at Kerikeri which thus became the headquarters of Butler as the superintendent of the mission. Butler was New Zealand's first ordained resident clergyman. The “Kemp House”, which was built shortly after the establishment of the settlement at Kerikeri, apparently as a residence for Butler, is New Zealand's oldest existing European building, and Kerikeri, New Zealand's oldest town with a continuing history of European occupation.

Butler's journal of his years at Kerikeri gives many arresting details of his contacts with Hongi, Te Morenga, and other chiefs, and of the contemporary Maori culture. While the Butlers had anxious moments as the result of the occasional turbulence of the local Maoris, they were accepted or tolerated by them, the Maoris being well aware of the material advantages of this association in the shape of hoes, axes, and other perquisites. The Butlers for their part ministered devotedly to the spiritual and material needs of their Maori neighbours. Butler at an early date ran into stormy weather with Thomas Kendall and the other lay missionaries at Rangihoua, who had preceded Butler at the Bay of Islands. Kendall in particular was recalcitrant, acting as a go-between in securing for visiting ships pigs and potatoes from the Maoris in exchange for muskets. Butler himself on at least one occasion was forced by a shortage of supplies to buy produce with a musket. Kendall systematically procured muskets for Hongi and other chiefs, and ignored Butler's protests. Numbers of minor differences arose between Butler and the other Europeans of the mission station at Rangihoua. On 27 February 1820, Marsden arrived at the Bay of Islands in the naval ship Dromedary. On 2 March 1820 Kendall, accompanied by Hongi, took passage for England in a visiting ship, thereby earning the disapproval of Marsden and Butler.

On 3 May 1820 Butler recorded the first ploughing of land in New Zealand in the following words: ‘The agricultural plough was for the first time put into the land of New Zealand at Kideekidee, and I felt much pleasure in holding it after a team of six bullocks brought down by the Dromedary. I trust that this day will be remembered with gratitude, and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn. Each heart rejoiced in this auspicious day, and said, “May God speed the plough’”. In the years that followed, Butler and his Maori helpers at Kerikeri established a small mixed farm which earned the praise of later visitors. Butler was New Zealand's first systematic cultivator of the land.

In October and November 1820, Butler accompanied Marsden in a whaleboat to the Hauraki Gulf. They crossed the isthmus, being the first Europeans to visit Manukau. Butler went with Marsden as far as Kaipara and then returned to the whaleboat at Tamaki.

Butler was not the first Magistrate in New Zealand, since Kendall had been appointed a Justice of the Peace before him. These appointments were made in New South Wales on the assumption that New Zealand was a British dependency, a view that was later repudiated. Since, however, British law runs in respect of British subjects everywhere, there is a case for regarding Butler's powers as well grounded in respect of British subjects in New Zealand. On 3 December 1820, Butler committed four soldiers on the Dromedary for trial in New South Wales for the murder of a seaman. For the most part, however, his powers were nominal, since he had no means of enforcement.

Marsden returned to New South Wales leaving the Bay of Islands in December 1820.

On 12 July 1821, Kendall and Hongi arrived back from their visit to England. Hongi, having found out that Butler disapproved of this visit, and of his having acquired muskets and powder, became prejudiced against him.

By this time Butler's differences with Kendall and other European members of the mission, as well as Hongi's equivocal attitude toward him, had made his position difficult. To these trials was now added a major quarrel with Marsden himself, brought on in some measure by Butler's own hastiness of temper. While visiting Port Jackson in December 1821 and January 1822, Butler accused Marsden of malpractice in certain business transactions, and charged him with having made payments to Maoris in New Zealand with muskets and powder, and of procuring a Maori head. These charges Butler repeated in a letter to the Church Missionary Society in London. Marsden sent an indignant letter of repudiation to Butler, saying that since Butler had stated that he would not accept Marsden's direction, he would wash his hands of Butler until the Church Missionary Society had made an adjudication. When Butler, after his return to New Zealand, wrote a conciliatory letter to Marsden, Marsden sent an uncompromising reply. Further difficulties arose for Butler when Kendall admitted charges of misconduct, being suspended by Marsden from the mission.

In August 1823, Marsden arrived at the Bay of Islands with the Rev. Henry Williams. Marsden decided to withdraw Butler from the mission, and secured Butler's reluctant consent to this. Subsequently Marsden charged Butler with drunkenness while visiting a ship, the witnesses against Butler being two sea captains. Before a committee of the missionaries Butler refused to defend himself, and the committee accepted the testimony against him. When James Spencer, who had accompanied Butler to the ship, wished to testify for him, the committee declined to reopen the case.

The Butlers left the Bay of Islands in company with Marsden on 14 November 1823. Marsden maintained in Port Jackson that Butler's alleged drunkenness had unfitted him for further service as a clergyman there. The Butlers returned to England, where Butler retired from the Church Missionary Society's service.

Butler's own statement in a letter was that all he drank with the sea captains was “a little Hollands in the bottom of a half-pint tumbler”. Butler's way of life both before and after the episode is hard to reconcile with a reputation for drunkenness. White and Lawry, contemporary Wesleyan missionaries who knew Butler well, testified that his moral character was above reproach.

From 1825 to 1839 Butler held minor curacies and relieving appointments in various parishes in England.

In 1839 Butler, accompanied by his wife, his daughter Hannah Barton, and her husband, sailed from England for New Zealand in order to take up an appointment as native guardian and interpreter at the Port Nicholson (Wellington) settlement of the New Zealand Company. Part of the reason for this appointment was that Butler knew the Maori language, and had been made a justice of the peace by Macquarie many years previously. Butler had also given advice to the Company about their plans for settlement. They arrived at Port Nicholson on 20 April 1840. Butler became established at Petone, where he was a clergyman and Maori welfare agent until his death on 18 June 1841. He was buried at Gear Island, his grave being later washed away in a flood.

John Gare Butler was a well-intentioned man of nervous temperament whose fate it was to find himself placed in the midst of contending forces at the end of the world, without adequate preparation or experience. It was not surprising that he was overwhelmed. His failure, however, was far from inglorious, since it was no small feather in his cap that he was the first clergyman who dared to live among the feared man-eaters of New Zealand, and become the first systematic cultivator of New Zealand's soil.

by Charles Andrew Sharp, B.A.(OXON.), M.A.(N.Z.), Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden, 1765–1838, Elder, J. R. (1932)
• Earliest New Zealand, Barton, R. J. (1927)
• Adventure in New Zealand, Wakefield, E. J. (1845, 1908, 1955).

(Rubus spp).

Rambler roses, species of Rosa, are usually associated with the vegetation of Britain. In the same family, Rosaceae, the genus Rubus, has several climbing and rambling species in New Zealand. These are known as the bush lawyers because the prickly stems clasp the clothing of travellers through the forest. They have become more widespread in second growth induced by settlement. The genus itself is a very large and cosmopolitan one containing about 1,000 species, but the five New Zealand species are endemic. The introduced blackberry is Rubus fruticosa.

R. australis forms stout main stems and will climb to heights of 30 ft or more. The juvenile plant creeps over the forest floor until it finds a tree or shrub to climb. The leaves are about elliptic, 1 to 2 in. long and have long petioles. Male and female flowers are on separate vines. They are white and produced in panicles. Fruit is like a small blackberry but is yellowish. The species occurs throughout the North, South, and Stewart Islands in lowland to montane forest. R. squarrosus is a species that has different forms, one of which is a bush composed of fine interlaced branchlets, with leaflets reduced to the midribs. This and the stem are beset with yellow prickles.

Other variations are to be found throughout all the species, and some of them also appear to be connected by intermediate forms or possibly hybrids.

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

(1801–71).

British Resident and early settler.

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

James Busby was the second son of John Busby, a surveying engineer of Northumbrian extraction resident in Edinburgh, and his wife Sarah, née Kennedy. In 1824 the family migrated to New South Wales. John Busby gained fame by salvaging the brig Henrietta Elizabeth, wrecked at Ruapuke Island, and prospered as a coal-mining surveyor and constructor of Sydney's water supply.

James Busby, always a man of ideas, had studied grape-growing in France, and published a book on the subject in 1825. He bought land on the Hunter River where he planned to start wine making, and as farm superintendent at the Male Orphan School near Liverpool, New South Wales (1825–27), he instructed the boys in viticulture. He subsequently acted as collector of internal revenue and member of the Land Board, but when these appointments ceased (1829), he returned to England to seek preferment from the Colonial Office. “I could not,” he wrote, “have timed my visit better.” His patron, Earl Haddington, got him a favourable hearing at Whitehall, and he attracted notice by half-a-dozen memoirs on subjects ranging from secondary punishments and the jury system to grape growing and the state of New Zealand. This last topic was already engaging the attention of the Government. Fears were entertained of French intervention, and 13 Maori chiefs were petitioning for protection. Governor Darling suggested appointing a political agent to curb the conduct of visiting ships' crews and round up runaway convicts. Lord Goderich, Secretary of State, adopted Darling's idea but passed over his nominee, Captain Sturt, and offered the job to Busby, on conditions. The office was experimental; acceptance would carry no claim to pension or future employment. Nevertheless Busby accepted it optimistically. Before leaving Europe, he made another tour of France and Spain collecting vine cuttings, which he later distributed in New South Wales, South Australia, and New Zealand, thus establishing his claim to be the pioneer viticulturalist in the Southern Hemisphere. He returned to Sydney in 1832, and in the same year he married Miss Agnes Dow.

British intervention in New Zealand at this stage was of the most cautious, frugal sort, involving no assertion of sovereignty and no cost to the Treasury, for the expenses were charged on New South Wales. Lord Goderich had contemplated supporting Busby with a small body of troops, stationing a warship at New Zealand, and giving him magisterial powers, but none of these things was ever done. He was expected to exercise a moral influence over captains and crews, runaway convicts, beachcombers, settlers, traders, and cannibal Maoris, solely by virtue of his powers of personal persuasion and the dignity of his Vice-Consul's uniform. At Sydney, the new Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, had no faith in his mission; his Council made parsimony its watchword. Busby was supplied with a prefabricated small two-roomed cottage, but he had to pay the freight to New Zealand out of his own pocket and buy the covering and lining timber as well as the land on which to build it. He was even charged 30s. a day for his accommodation on HMS Imogene on passage to New Zealand.

He landed at the Bay of Islands on 10 May 1833, and six days later he met 22 leading chiefs at Paihia, read them King William IV's message, and announced that he had come to help them to become “a rich and wise people like the people of Great Britain”. But the Maoris showed little disposition to cease their tribal wars, and paid less heed to Busby than to the missionaries. Bourke refused him the money to form a native police force, so ships' captains continued to make their own arrangements with the chiefs for apprehending deserters. Settlers were disgusted that he had no legal authority to settle their disputes.

Busby bought land at Waitangi, a mile or so north of Paihia, built his miniature residency, and brought his young wife over to join him (August 1833). His first constructive political effort was to give the northern chiefs a flag (20 March 1834), so that New Zealand built ships might be registered and protected from seizure by customs officials abroad. He hoped that the flag would bring into existence a Maori federation with “an established government” capable of orderly judicial and political action. A month later (30 April), the residency was attacked, Busby slightly wounded, and his store ransacked. The settlers angrily demanded that the outrage be punished; the missionaries intervened, but no redress was forthcoming till December when HMS Alligator visited the bay. Then Titore and other chiefs produced a Maori called Rete as the culprit, banished him, and ceded a piece of land at Puketona to King William as compensation for the insult. Rete nevertheless continued to hang around and make a nuisance of himself. Busby complained that he was “the least protected of any individual possessing property … in New Zealand”, and asked for £250 a year to engage two constables. Bourke refused, considering that Busby was a failure, and the Colonial Office contemplated his removal (1835). Instead, they appointed Lieutenant T. McDonnell, R.N., a Hokianga timber merchant, as additional Resident (unpaid). The two Residents promptly quarrelled over a proposal to ban the sale of spirits, Busby maintaining that regulations made by the settlers were ultra vires and could not be enforced without causing riots. Dual authority caused endless friction till McDonnell resigned (July 1836).

Then came Baron de Thierry's startling announcement that he was coming to New Zealand with ships, arms, property, and hundreds of followers to set up his own government and rescue the country from degradation. To this paper bombshell Busby responded valiantly. Within 36 hours he called a meeting of 35 chiefs at Waitangi (28 October 1835), and persuaded them to repudiate de Thierry's land claims and sign a Declaration of Independence in the name of the Confederation of Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand. Hopefully, he envisaged the creation, under British protection, of an effective native government exercising exclusive legislative powers, and he proposed erecting a wooden Parliament building at Waitangi to accommodate the legislators. By treaty, Great Britain might obtain trade concessions and the right to levy shipping duties, appoint magistrates, maintain troops, and exercise all other powers necessary to protect and regulate the European settlers. Bourke ridiculed the whole idea, called it premature and imprudent to vest legislative powers in the chiefs, and snubbed Busby by commanding him to recognise McDonnell's regulations concerning ardent spirits.

Poor Busby was nonplussed. When Lord Glenelg suggested that he should travel about the country more, he replied that he could not leave Waitangi without exposing his family to danger. When settlers complained of his inaction, he answered that his moral authority should not be put to the test of every petty squabble—“its strength, in a degree, consists in its non-exertion”. Even the missionaries who had helped him in the early days became estranged, and for a time he was not on speaking terms with Henry Williams, though he attended his church at Paihia. He complained sadly, but with some justification, that the Government did nothing for him—“The Governor's policy … has been concentrated upon one object … to get rid of me.” Matters grew worse in 1836. Disputes about land sales caused war between two powerful divisions of the northern Maoris. Busby's efforts at mediation were as fruitless as his appeals for armed assistance. In despair, he wrote that his office was “in fact in abeyance” and asked leave to go to England to put the case to the Colonial Office, but this was refused. Another native war broke out at Tauranga, and Maketu was pillaged; the schooner Industry was plundered at Hokianga (December 1836); Titore and Pomare fought each other at the Bay of Islands (April 1837). Busby could do nothing about such things. “What is wanted,” he reported (June 1837), “is a paramount authority supported by a force adequate to secure the efficiency of its measures,” and he renewed his proposals for the recognition of an independent federal Maori state in treaty with Great Britain as protective power. “They cannot, I think,” he wrote to his brother, “adopt my plan without leaving me to conduct it.”

He was deluding himself. Sir Geo. Gipps, who replaced Bourke (December 1837), had a poor opinion of Busby, and Busby (who called Gipps “a one-eyed Whig”) knew it. “We shall get no favours from Gipps,” he told his family, “or from any Whig. They have an instinctive hatred of honest men – as much so as their father the devil.” Party politics apart, Busby had little claim to promotion. His record of accomplishment in five years was unimpressive – only a file of plaintive dispatches, a broken set of shipping returns, and one or two isolated cases of active intervention. He once sent a housebreaker, Doyle, to Sydney for trial; and he had presided over a mixed tribunal which condemned a Maori slave, Kite, to death for the murder of Henry Biddle (May 1838), an episode on which Gipps drily commented, “Justice independently of law is a rather dangerous principle.” The means of doing more had been denied him, but now that the British Government was contemplating a more decisive policy, Busby was passed over without thanks.

Captain Hobson visited New Zealand in 1837 and recommended establishing British authority by treaty and governing the European settlements on a “factory” system adapted from the East India Company's scheme. Busby criticised this proposal and pointed out the impossibility of collecting all the “pig and potato merchants”, sawyers, flax gatherers, whalers, and farmers into “factories”. Captain FitzRoy's evidence on the state of New Zealand, deposed about the same time, he denounced as “lies”. Despite his representations, he was coldly informed that his services would cease on the arrival of Hobson as prospective Lieutenant-Governor. Though disappointed, Busby loyally assisted Hobson in drafting the Treaty of Waitangi and securing its acceptance, and Hobson handsomely recognised his cooperativeness.

To provide for his growing family, Busby had acquired more land and embarked upon farming and trading. By 1838, he had imported several hundred sheep and two bullocks, and was growing grapes and making wine at Waitangi, besides having extensive vegetable gardens, potato fields, and a nursery of forest trees. In 1839–40 he made further land purchases at Te Puke (near Waitangi), Waimate, Ngunguru, and Whangarei, meaning to increase his flocks of sheep, breed cattle, grow tobacco, and sell timber. He also laid out the township of Victoria at Waitangi, and offered lots to incoming settlers. In June 1839 he valued his property at £5,000; a year later, at £20,000. But his ventures were jeopardised by Hobson's proclamation that all land purchases made before January 1840 must be submitted to commissioners, and by Gipps's ordinance limiting awards to 2,560 acres, except in special cases. Busby went to Sydney to assert the validity of purchases made prior to the Treaty of Waitangi, but he had no case in law, and eventually, instead of some 10,000 acres which he claimed at the Bay of Islands, he was granted 2,090 acres.

His Whangarei and Ngunguru claims (about 90,000 acres) were disputed for 30 years. Busby held deeds of sale from the Maoris, but the Government withheld grants and tried to induce the Maoris to resell the land to the Crown. When Poukoura refused because the land was Busby's, Grey's agent Johnson induced a lesser chief to accept £200 for it. The older chiefs made him return the money, and the incident nearly led to a tribal war. Nevertheless, the Government persisted and eventually got Tirarau to sell the land to the Crown by telling him that Busby had been compensated, which was untrue. By this time, Busby's affairs were in a sorry state. His town planning at Victoria failed, the timber trade collapsed in the depression of the early forties, he had to mortgage his Waitangi lands to meet his debts, and only the fortunate sale of a cargo of kauri gum to America prevented the banks from distraining upon his effects.

Despite financial worries and increasing deafness, he took an active part in public affairs. He represented the Bay of Islands in the Auckland Provincial Council from 1853 to 1855, and again from 1857 till 1863. He denounced Governor Grey as a person who “did not know the truth”, and by speech and pamphlet defended the rights of the old land purchasers and the pre-emption claimants. In 1861 he became editor of the Aucklander, and was noted for his fearless attacks on the Government. He once called Governor Gore Browne “the embodiment of a negative”. But nothing he touched succeeded. His newspaper collapsed in 1863, and he was again bewildered by his debts. He continued to indulge in ruinous litigation over his Whangarei lands (1858, 1859, 1862), and on one occasion had the Governor, Sir George Grey, brought into court to produce a particular document. He went to England to plead his case in 1864, but the Colonial Office refused him audience. Eventually in 1868 he accepted arbitration, and to his astonishment was awarded £36,800 compensation in land scrip, plus the right to all of his Whangarei land that was still unsold. The Auckland Superintendent impeded this award and twice took it to appeal, leaving Busby in great distress. In 1870 he finally received £23,000 cash compensation, having spent nearly £14,000 in legal costs.

In 1871 he journeyed to England for an eye operation, but died of a chill (15 July). His wife survived him till 1889.

by James Rutherford, M.A.(DURHAM), PH.D.(MICH.) (1906–63), Historian, Auckland.

• Historical Records of Australia, Series I, Vols. XV–XXI, (1922–24)
• The Pre-emption Land Question, Busby, J. (1850)
• Busby of Waitangi, Ramsden, E. (1942)
• Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958).

(1893– ).

Educationalist and Pacifist.

A new biography of Burton, Ormond Edward appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

p>Ormond Edward Burton was born in Auckland on 16 January 1893 and educated at Auckland University. He was a teacher at several stages of his life, but he is better known as a Christian pacifist and churchman of high ideals and strong individual convictions. During the First World War he saw active service and was awarded the Military Medal and the Medaille d'Honneur. In 1935 he entered the Methodist Ministry from which he was expelled in 1942 on account of his activities in the Christian Pacifist Society (chairman, 1937–45). Because of these activities he was imprisoned four times. Re-admitted to the Methodist Church in 1955, he has lived in retirement since 1960. His publications include Our Little Bit, the Auckland Regiment (1921); A Study in Creative History (1930); The Silent Division (1935); The Conflict of the Cross (1939); Bart (1944); In Prison (1945); and Arthur Liversedge (1951).

(1796–1871).

Otago coloniser.

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

Thomas Burns was born at Mossgiel, Ayrshire, on 10 April 1796, third son of Gilbert, brother of the poet. Burns received his early education at the parish school and at Wallace Hall Academy, Closeburn, Dumfriesshire, and, later, at the Grammar School at Haddington. In 1812 he entered the University of Edinburgh to study for the ministry of the Established Church of Scotland, meanwhile acting as tutor in the family of Sir John Dalrymple of Berwickshire. In 1823 Burns was licensed by the Presbytery of Haddington and, through the good offices of Sir John's brother, Sir Hugh, he was presented to the living at Ballantrae, to which he was inducted in April 1826. Early in 1830 he married Clementina, daughter of the Rev. James Francis Grant, Rector of Rodness, and Prebendary and Canon of Chichester Cathedral. Later in that year he accepted the presentation to the parish of Monkton, Ayrshire, a most lucrative living. Burns remained there until the Disruption of May 1843 when, together with some 400 ministers of the Established Church, he threw in his lot with the newly formed Free Church. For the next 18 months he remained at New Prestwick as Free Church Minister, but in mid-1844 he accepted a temporary appointment at nearby Maybole, meanwhile acting as evangelist to Free Church stations in various parishes under the general direction of the Home Mission Committee.

In the tense months immediately preceding the Disruption, Burns had been attracted by the New Edinburgh (Otago) plan of colonisation which George Rennie had outlined in August 1842. Rennie brought his project to the notice of the Acting Committee of the Colonial Schemes of the Free Church of Scotland, the upshot being the selection of Burns as minister for the new settlement. Burns was most enthusiastic and at this juncture worked in close association both with Rennie and with Captain William Cargill, the latter a Peninsular War veteran who was eager to emigrate. Despite their best efforts the scheme languished. Worse still, a rift developed between Rennie on the one hand and Burns and Cargill on the other. The point at issue was the extent to which the Free Church interests should control the settlement. Rennie, whose “liberalism” and religious convictions were regarded by Burns as “doubtful”, was all for a comprehensive Scottish scheme; Burns and Cargill would have none of it. Gradually Rennie was manoeuvred into the background and, in October 1845, he announced his withdrawal. “I cannot but trace the hand of a gracious Providence in all this purging of our unchristian leaven”, wrote Burns to his confidant, Cargill. Nevertheless, although the battle had been won for the Free Church, the situation was unpromising. The New Zealand Company which had been sponsoring the project through the Association of Lay Members of the Free Church of Scotland, was financially embarrassed, while in Scotland land sales were disappointing. On 25 June 1846, in a mood of despair, Burns accepted a call to the parish of Portobello, near Edinburgh, leaving Cargill to battle on as best he could, assisted by Dr Andrew Aldcorn (1792–1877), honorary secretary to the Glasgow committee, and John McGlashan, the salaried secretary of the Association at Edinburgh. Gradually prospects improved and, in October 1847, Burns's appointment as minister to the new settlement was reaffirmed. A small and, in some respects, unimpressive band of emigrants was got together and on 27 November the party sailed from Greenock in the Philip Laing. They reached Port Chalmers on 15 April 1848, some three weeks later than Cargill, who had arrived there in the John Wickliffe on 23 March.

Once at Otago, Burns gave evidence of practical leadership. He had a sound knowledge of farming from his boyhood days and his farm at Grants Braes, across the harbour from the little centre, Dunedin, vindicated his faith in the soil and climate of the district. He kept systematic meteorological records and, as he made his way throughout the Otago block, assessed the timber and mineral resources of the country. His encouraging reports did much to hearten the dispirited. He worked closely with Cargill, the New Zealand Company's agent, in planning the organisation of the community, especially on matters connected with the social, economic, and even political welfare of the emigrants. Above all, he never forgot his spiritual responsibilities to the people. For six years he toiled on unaided until 1854 when the Rev. William Bannerman and the Rev. William Will arrived to take over the Clutha and the Taieri charges respectively. Burns was now able to form the Presbytery of Otago, which was constituted in June 1854.

In the early years of settlement Burns appeared among his flock as a solemn and dignified figure. He wore a Geneva cap set above a grave face whose main features were the eyes, large and bright. To the community at large he was regarded as the personification of stern and uncompromising morality, and warrant, as it were, for its orthodoxy. From the very outset, says James Barr, he bore a patriarchal carriage and exercised a patriarchal influence, ever moving about and known to everyone. Like his colleague Cargill, over whom he exerted a strong influence, especially in matters spiritual, Burns lacked the saving grace of humour and saw in sinful humanity a subject mainly for censure. As a preacher Burns was strongly evangelical and his sermons, which were delivered in a rather stiff and dry manner, were directed towards the eradication of vices which flourished even in the Free Church theocracy. Burns's code was too rigid to placate the hostile minority – the “Little Enemy” – which had been present at Otago from the beginning, and his attitude did much to foster bitterness and dissension. With the ready support of Cargill he put an end to the first newspaper of the settlement, the Otago News, and it was he, through his mouthpiece Cargill, who cautioned the Rev. Chas. Creed the Methodist missionary at Waikouaiti, against trespassing on the Free Church preserves. Such cases – and there were many – were made much of by Burns's opponents both within and without the settlement and they were certainly an embarrassment to the Association's friends in London and Scotland. Part of the trouble sprang from Burns's inability to see that his predetermined pattern of “class” settlement was impracticable in a mixed community which from the outset was sharply divided on many issues, not least those of land purchase and religion. By the close of the fifties, however, events took a happier turn. Cargill's death in 1860 robbed Burns of a staunch ally, and the gold rushes of the early sixties, with their thousands of the “New Iniquity”, almost overwhelmed the “Old Identities” of the first decade.

Burns was now 65 and his great period of leadership had ended. With his physical and mental powers waning, he was content to devote himself to the ministry of the First Church of Otago, Dunedin. Despite his defects of leadership, Burns had worked steadily for an ideal and it was fitting that due recognition should come from his old University, Edinburgh, which in 1861 conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. A true Scot in his appreciation of the value of education within the framework of the province, Burns, like Macandrew, had constantly urged the Provincial Council to set aside land endowments for higher education. But secularisation he as zealously opposed, for that would be a moral breach of trust with the aims of the founders of the Association. When the University of Otago was constituted, none questioned Burns's right to the office of Chancellor; as such, he presided over the first meeting of the council on 10 November 1869. But the sands were fast running out and he did not live to see the inaugural ceremony of 5 July 1871. Early in that year he had had a sudden collapse, and he died at his home, “Bankton”, London Street, Dunedin, on 23 January 1871.

Burns was survived by his wife (died 19 July 1878), six daughters, and a son, Arthur John (1830–1901). The eldest daughter, Clementina, married A. J. Elles (Ellis), Captain of the Philip Laing, at Dunedin on 14 June 1848, shortly after their arrival at Otago. Elles settled at Invercargill in 1856, where he held a number of official appointments both there and at the Bluff. He died at Invercargill on 4 September 1886, aged 70. Arthur John Burns, the oldest of the family, came to Otago with his father in the Philip Laing and played a prominent part in provincial affairs, being a member of the Provincial Council from 1855 to 1859 and again from 1863 to 1870. He was a member of the House of Representatives on three occasions and vigorously opposed the abolition of the provinces. He was interested in developing secondary industries and founded the Mosgiel Woollen Co. in 1869.

by Alexander Hare McLintock, C.B.E., M.A., DIP.ED. (N.Z.), PH.D.(LOND.), Parliamentary Historian, Wellington.

• History of Otago, McLintock, A. H. (1949)
• A Great Coloniser – Rev. Dr Thomas Burns, Merrington, E. N. (1929)
• Otago Daily Times, 24 Jan 1871 (Obit).

(1825–1918).

Headmistress.

A new biography of Burn, Margaret Gordon appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Margaret Gordon Burn, née Huie, was born on 22 March 1825 at Edinburgh, Scotland, the eldest of eight children of Alexander Huie, a public accountant, and Eliza Gordon, née Edgar. Although her earlier education was gained at home from private tutors, she was permitted as a special favour to attend the senior classes in some subjects at Dr Reid's school in Circus Place, Edinburgh. For the next four years (1847–51) she was governess to Sir William Jackson's family at Liverpool. In 1852, following the death of her husband, the mother brought the children to Geelong, in Victoria, and from 1852 until 1857 Margaret Huie conducted a small school there. In the latter year she married Andrew Burn, who later became headmaster of Geelong Presbyterian School. In 1864, when her husband's health failed, she established a private high school for girls at Geelong. She conducted this, which was modelled on the Circus Place institution, until 1870, when she was selected from a large number of applicants to become the foundation Principal of Otago Girls' High School. In 1871 she arrived in Dunedin where, in addition to organising and teaching the first public school for girls in New Zealand, she also ran the school's boarding establishment. The constant pressure of work gradually undermined her health, with the result that in 1884 she was obliged to resign her position. In September 1887 she accepted an appointment as headmistress of the newly opened Waitaki Girls' High School at Oamaru. She retired in 1892 and, during her later years, lived with various members of her family. She took a few pupils for tuition in English and French and maintained her interest in the education of girls.

Margaret Burn died on 8 December 1918 at 19 Hart Street, Roslyn, Dunedin, leaving two sons and one daughter. Her younger son, David William Murray Burn (1862–1951), was a popular poet in Dunedin about the turn of the century, and under the pseudonym of “Marsyas” he contributed verses to the Otago Witness for many years.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• The History of Otago, McLintock, A. H. (1949)
• Golden Jubilee 1887–1937, Waitaki Girls' High School (1938)
• Evening Star (Dunedin), 9 Dec 1918 (Obit).

(1829–66).

Maungatapu murderer.

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

Richard Burgess, alias Hill, was born in London, reputedly the illegitimate son of a guards officer and a lady's companion. Educated and thoroughly spoiled by his mother, on her marriage in 1837 he rebelled against his stepfather's discipline, thereafter consorting with street urchins engaged in petty crime. Transported to Van Dieman's Land in 1841 for burglary, he won his ticket-of-leave in 1847, and proceeded to Ballarat where he learned the stonemason's trade. In 1852 he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for armed highway robbery, and was released in October 1861.

Burgess arrived in Otago in January 1862. He met Kelly on the goldfields, and the pair spent the next four years in Dunedin Gaol for armed claim-robbery. Released on 11 September 1865, they were escorted by the provincial police to the Westland border.

Burgess, leader of the Maungatapu gang, was a vain man, proud of his crimes. In Court he boasted of no less than nine murders, and in gaol, awaiting trial and execution, he wrote his memoirs which have never been published. He was executed in Nelson Gaol on 5 October 1866, along with Kelly and Levy; Sullivan, the fourth member of the gang, was reprieved.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.