The Snares Islands, about latitude 48° S and longitude 166° 35' E, lie some 65 miles SSW of Stewart Island of which they are commonly regarded as distant outliers. Sometimes, however, they are described as belonging to the sub-Antarctic group. There is one larger triangular island with several offshore islets and pinnacles, and a string of bare rocky islets to the south-west. These latter stand just above a submerged rock reef (the Western Reef). All the islands of the group are made of coarse granite rocks generally similar to those of Stewart Island. The main island (highest point 620 ft) is bounded by steep cliffs in the west and south, sloping off to the north-east where there is a good sheltered anchorage for boats.

As the group is now visited only at rare intervals, climate records are meagre but the weather may be described as windy (mainly from the north and west), cloudy, wet, and cool. A stunted forest cover, mainly of species of Olearia, Senecio, and Hebe, with patches of coarse tussock, reflects this harsh climate. Surface beds of so-called guano are peat, impregnated with wastes from the bird colonies.

The Snares, discovered by Vancouver and Broughton independently on the same day (23 November 1791), were soon invaded by sealers. The almost exterminated seal population is increasing steadily, the islands being now a sanctuary for seals and a few sea lions. There is also a very large bird population, especially of mutton birds and penguins. Happily there are no introduced mammals to disturb them.

by George Jobberns, C.B.E., M.A., D.SC., Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Canterbury.

Snapper (Chrysophrys auratus), or tamure of the Maoris, is our most popular food fish. It is found throughout New Zealand, but is most abundant in the north. A snapper will eat almost anything in the way of animal food, shellfish, crabs, shrimps, heart urchins, and small fishes, with apparently no particular preferences. Average fish range from 10 to 15 in., but occasional examples are known up to 36 lb in weight and over 40 in. in length. The snapper is silvery in colour, deepening to bronzy red and pink above, and with blue spots scattered over the silvery sides. Confusion exists over the spelling of the popular name, which is sometimes erroneously rendered as “schnapper”.

The New Zealand snapper is not a member of the tropical snapper family, but belongs to the sea bream family, which also includes several related Australian fish.

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

(Janthina violacea).

The lavender-coloured shell of this snail is often washed up in large numbers on northern west coast beaches. Occasionally one also finds the remains of the deep purple body of the animal and of the raft of bubbles on which this unusual snail floats at the surface in tropical waters. There are three different species of this genus which are likely to be found in New Zealand waters. Another related group of planktonic snails is the group of species known as pteropods or “winged feet”. Where Janthinas are washed up, one often finds also the shells of Spirula, the ram's-horn shell, a white shell coiled in a flat open spiral. This, however, is not from a snail, but forms part of the internal skeleton of a larger mollusc related to the octupus and squid.

by Richard Morrison Cassie, M.SC.(N.Z.), D.SC.(AUCK.), Senior Lecturer in Zoology, University of Auckland.

(Amphibola crenata).

About the size of a garden snail, this is the shellfish seen scattered in thousands over upper tidal mud flats. It feeds by sifting organic particles from the mud. The species is remarkable in that it breathes by means of a primitive lung, not gills. It is the only air-breathing marine snail possessing an operculum. The Maoris esteemed this shellfish as food and called it titiko.

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

(Paryphanta busbyi).

This is a North Auckland representative of a group of large carnivorous snails found only in New Zealand, but with near relatives in Tasmania and Victoria. The shell of the species is a flattened spiral 2 ½–3 in. across of dark greenish colour. The animal feeds on earthworms and slugs and produces hard, limy-shelled eggs of about ½ in. long which it deposits in nests under the leaf mould of the forest floor. Thirty-eight species and varieties of these large carnivorous snails are known from New Zealand. Although they are distributed from the North Cape to Southland, they occur mostly west of the main axial mountain systems, either in rain forest or in subalpine forest and tussock. Some of the South Island species are brilliantly coloured—Paryphanta superba grows to 3 ½ in. in diameter and is uniformly khaki; P. gilliesi is red-brown like rosewood; P. lignaria is alternately dark brown and yellowish in radial stripes; and P. hochstetteri, from the mountain tops of Nelson, is spirally banded, lined in reds and browns on a yellowish ground. Many of the subspecies occupy restricted areas bounded by topographic features, which function as segregating influences. Study of the distributional patterns throws light on former land connections and past topography. Such evidence points fairly conclusively to the very recent origin of Cook Strait.

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

(Placostylus hongii).

This is a tall-spired, solidly built chocolate to reddish-brown land snail up to 3 in. in height. Formerly these snails were abundant along the Northland East Coast from Whangarei to Whangaroa, but, with the clearing of coastal forest, they now exist only in a few isolated spots. The species, however, still survives in strength at the Poor Knights Islands. These snails are vegetarian and feed largely upon fallen karaka leaves. They are found hidden under leaves and around sedges, but in flax only when there is no other cover.

Another species, ambagiosus, with several subspecies, belongs to the Cape Maria van Diemen-North Cape area, and a third, the largest of them all, is found at the Three Kings Islands. The latter occurs in very small colonies but survival is now assured by the action of the Department of Internal Affairs, some years ago, in having the main island cleared of goats, which were playing havoc with its flora and fauna.

The Placostylus snails are significant in the reconstruction of former land connections, for they occur outside New Zealand only in the Melanesian islands, northwards to the Solomons, and eastwards to Fiji. This area of distribution coincides with the now largely submerged “Melanesian plateau”.

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

(1798–1869).

Soldier, surveyor, and artist.

A new biography of Smith, William Mein appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Mein Smith was born in Cape Town in 1798, the son of a civilian officer of the Admiralty. Like so many more of those who figured prominently in the early days of New Zealand colonisation, his origins were military. He entered the British Army as a cadet in 1813, and in the course of service in Canada, Gibraltar, and at Woolwich Academy rose to the rank of Captain. While in Canada he married the daughter of General Basgrave Wallace. As a captain, he also held a professorial post in plan drawing at the Woolwich Royal Military Academy, and it was in that capacity that he became Surveyor-General to the New Zealand Company in 1839. He sailed from London with three other surveyors in the Cuba and arrived at Port Nicholson in January 1840. He chose Thorndon as the site of a city when his proposal in favour of Petone (Britannia) was rejected following a Hutt Valley flood. He was also a member of the committee set up for the maintenance of law and order in April 1840, and was gazetted a Magistrate in 1841. He still had his military affiliations, but in 1842 he retired from the Army and in the following year sold his commission.

Smith's surveying activities covered a large part of New Zealand. He began with land selection in the Wanganui area and spent a lot of time in the Wairarapa. In September 1842 he was commissioned by Colonel Wakefield to survey South Island harbours along the east coast, a task which took him three months. Unfortunately, much of the valuable data he compiled was lost when his cutter The Brothers foundered in a squall at Akaroa. He took part in the hostilities with the Maoris in 1845 as a captain of the Thorndon militia, but in 1847 he forsook public affairs and, with Samuel Revans, a former newspaper partner of Henry Samuel Chapman in Canada, took over Huangaroa Station in the Wairarapa. This comprised 22,000 acres of freehold and 30,000 acres of leasehold. While Smith was associated with this venture it did well but after his death in 1869 Revans found it a costly business. Smith found time as a pastoralist to serve in the Legislative Council in 1851, and in 1858 he was elected to represent the Wairarapa in the Wellington Provincial Council, a post which he held until his retirement in 1865.

Smith was of a scholarly turn of mind. He was a man of simple tastes, quiet and unobtrusive in manner, and keenly interested in mathematics, art, and natural science. As such he was at the time regarded as a strange partner for the fiery, dogmatic, and frequently unscrupulous Samuel Revans, but his influence on Revans must have been strong because the Huangaroa Station enterprise flourished as long as Smith was associated with it. The facility with pencil and brush that had secured Smith the professorship of plan drawing at Woolwich stood him in good stead throughout his years in New Zealand. In his sketches and water colours, he captured much of the contemporary scene and these charming, if unpretentious, studies are now recognised as having great historical value. His years in the region of Martinborough, where Huangaroa Station was, located, produced some most interesting water colours, examples of which were displayed by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, as recently as April 1961. His work also includes some sketches of the Wellington area of the early days, and a number of varied studies of the western coastline from Porirua to Otaki and in the vicinity of the mouth of the Manawatu River.

Mein Smith died at Greytown on 3 January 1869.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.

• Early New Zealand Engineers, Furkert, F. W. (1953)
• Wellington Independent, 5 Jan 1869 (Obit).

(1840–1922).

Surveyor and ethnologist.

A new biography of Smith, Stephenson Percy appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Stephenson Percy Smith was born in June 1840 at Beccles, Suffolk, the eldest son of John Stephenson Smith. The family of eight arrived at New Plymouth by the Pekin in February 1850. Percy Smith at 14 joined the Survey Department in February 1855 and, on completing his cadetship two years later, was appointed Assistant Surveyor. In February 1857, with A. Standish, Frederick Murray, Wilson Hursthouse, and two others, he made what was probably the fifth ascent of Egmont. The following summer the same four, with J. McKellar, undertook a much more ambitious journey up the coast to the Mokau River, which was followed up to the Ohura, thence into the Wanganui basin and across country to the southern end of Lake Taupo. After a diversion north to Rotorua and adjacent lakes, the party returned round Lake Taupo to the Rangipo desert, the Hautapu River, and the Rangitikei basin to the coast and home. As Smith recorded, the party walked 500 miles, canoed 46, and rode a further 60 miles.

In October 1859 he was transferred to the Native Land Purchase Office in Auckland and for the next four years was surveying blocks in the district. A home transfer to Taranaki as District Surveyor followed in March 1865, his main duties being the survey of confiscated lands including Waitara township and vicinity. Further south, particularly in 1866, hazardous work on the military frontier brought him under fire on the Keteonetea Road between the Waitotara and Waingongoro Rivers.

In January 1868 he went to the Chathams to undertake the triangulation and subdivision of the group, his diaries fully recording the escape of Te Kooti and followers. He returned to Taranaki in February 1869, but was without survey work until October, during which time, among other tasks, he designed a blast furnace and smelting works. February 1870 saw him back in Auckland as Inspector of Surveys, his main task during the next six years being the triangulation of the North Island, his field work involving extensive journeys in the centre of the Island and on the East Coast. During the seasons of 1871 and 1873, for example, he was in the northern Ruahine and southern Kaimanawa Ranges, the Taupo, Kaingaroa, and Rotorua districts, and ascended peaks from Aorangi and Tauhara to Ruawahia.

He was appointed Chief Surveyor in the Auckland district in January 1877 and Assistant Surveyor-General in 1882. Immediately after the Tarawera eruption he was instructed to report on the disaster and made two visits to the region, the first a hasty survey from 14 to 17 June, and a more detailed exploration from 27 July to 12 August, his final report being embodied in The Eruption of Tarawera (1886).

In August 1887 he sailed with Captain Fairchild in the Stella to the Kermadec Islands to confirm New Zealand possession and to report on the group (The Kermadec Islands: Their Capabilities and Extent, 1887). His appointment as Surveyor-General on 29 January 1889 was the merited culmination of a career marked by energy, application, tact, and originality.

From his earliest Taranaki years Smith had made himself familiar with Maori language and custom, and increasingly throughout his life recorded tribal history and mythology. To provide a focal point for ethnological research in New Zealand, he convened a meeting in Wellington on 8 January 1892 at which the Polynesian Society was established. Smith at the outset acted as secretary, treasurer, and editor of the Journal, which latter position he held for the next 30 years. Despite pressing official duties he began the publication of a lengthy series of studies of Maori history. The first edition of his study of Polynesian origins, Hawaiki, the Whence of the Maori, appeared in 1898 when also he published The Peopling of the North, the Maori history of the Ngati Whatua tribe.

On his retirement on 31 October 1900 he was able to increase the tempo of his research. There was an interlude in 1902 with his appointment as Government Resident in Niue Island, where he spent five months instituting formal administration and a system of laws, later publishing material on the ethnology and, with Tregear, on the language of the island. In 1904 appeared one of his most enduring studies, The Wars of the Northern Against the Southern Tribes, which was revised as The Maori Wars of the Nineteenth Century. His later History and Traditions of the Maoris of the West Coast, North Island (1910) was a monumental study of the traditional history of the area which Smith knew best.

His careful recording of traditional material, cross checked as far as possible by varying tribal histories, left an invaluable contribution in the two works last cited. Although they can now be amplified or corrected on points of detail, the structure is substantially unchanged. In his studies on Maori origins he was more uncritical and framed hypotheses on what now seems slender linguistic and traditional evidence. The nevertheless high standard, for the period, of his own work and its publication provided a touchstone for later amplification which is being revised only today by more developed archaeological and critical techniques.

In 1863 Percy Smith married Mary Ann Crompton, daughter of W. M. Crompton, a Taranaki editor, schoolmaster, and provincial representative. Smith died at his home “Matai-Moana”, in New Plymouth, on 19 April 1922.

by Austin Graham Bagnall, M.A., A.L.A., Librarian, National Library Centre, Wellington.

• Early Travellers in New Zealand, Taylor, N. M. (ed.) (1959), “Notes of a Journey from Taranaki to Mokau …”, Smith, S. P.
• Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 31 (1922) (Obit)
• Taranaki Herald, 19 Apr 1922 (Obit).

(1902– ).

Research professor of medicine, University of Otago.

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

Frederick Horace Smirk was born at Accrington, Lancashire, on 12 December 1902 and educated at Manchester University, taking the degrees of M.B., Ch.B., and M.D. In 1930 he was awarded a Beit memorial fellowship and a Dickenson travelling scholarship. He was appointed to the medical unit of University College, London, in 1932, and in 1935 accepted the post of professor of pharmacology at the Egyptian University, Cairo. During the Second World War he served on the Scientific Defence Council. From 1940 to 1961 he was professor of medicine at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and in the following year was appointed research professor of medicine. In addition to his academic duties he has held visiting professorships or lectureships at institutions in England, Scotland, Australia, and India. He was vice-president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (1958–60), a member of the Psychiatric Committee (1957–60), and chairman of the Clinical Research Committee since 1942. From 1944 to 1960 he was a member of the Council of the Medical Research Council of New Zealand. He was also a member of the WHO Expert Committee on Hypertension and Ischaemic Heart Disease. His publications include Arterial Hypertension (1957), and he is joint author of Modern Trends in Geriatrics (1956), Current Therapy (1955), Annual Reviews of Medicine (1955), and Hypertensive Drugs (1956). Professor Smirk was created K.B.E. in 1958.

(1840–1927).

Irish swagman, known as “Ned the Shiner”.

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

dmond Slattery was born in 1840 in County Clare, Ireland, of hard-working Irish farming stock and he spent his early life there as herdsman and ploughman. For the time he had a better than average education, but neither a stern upbringing nor the example of a hard-working father could wean him from a care-free attitude to life. In 1869 Ned Slattery emigrated with his family to Australia where he was attracted to the goldfields. About 1873, however, he arrived in New Zealand and, although he was considered a good harvester and reliable all-round farm hand, he preferred a swagman's life on the road. In his prime Slattery was over 6 ft in height, straight and rawboned, with a long tireless stride and vigorous step. And even in old age he looked an impressive figure with a trimmed white beard and tightly buttoned coat. Unlike many of his fellow swaggers, Slattery set considerable store by appearances and was generally neatly clad and well shod. His territory was a wide one ranging from South Canterbury to Otago and Southland. Everywhere he went he was accepted as an honest man, in spite of a limitless repertoire of tricks and devices which he employed with great success in his efforts to do as little work as possible for the rewards offered. Slattery had an insatiable thirst that dated back to his poteen days in Ireland, and he displayed as much resolution in securing for himself supplies of whisky as ever he used in the avoidance of unnecessary work. By nature he was an inveterate joker and thought little of numbering among his victims both friends and benefactors, but there was no malice in him and not the least of his better qualities was a love of children. For over 40 years he timed his visits to Oamaru to coincide with the Caledonian Society's sports, held on New Year's Day, and he never failed to demonstrate his proficiency in the Irish jig, one of the features of a programme including piping, dancing, and athletics.

The Shiner was blessed with a wonderful constitution. Out in all weathers and certainly not over-clad, he continued to roam the dusty roads from Timaru to Gore long after he had passed the allotted span. He died on 11 August 1927, aged 87, at the Benevolent Institution, Caversham, Dunedin, and was buried at the Anderson's Bay cemetery.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.

• Otago Daily Times, 15 Aug 1927 (Obit)
• Shining with the Shiner, Lee, J. A. (1944)
• Shiner Slattery, Lee, J. A. (1964).