The basking shark, (Cetorhinus maximus), or reremai of the Maoris, is our largest shark, but it is quite harmless, for its teeth are blunt and only ¼ in. in length. Its food consists of small fishes and crustaceans. This shark attains a length of over 30 ft and its most distinctive feature is the extremely long gill slits, which almost sever the head. The reremai occurs both in New Zealand and in Australia.

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

Shannon is situated on flat land on the southeastern fringe of the Manawatu Plain and about 1 ½ miles south-east of the Manawatu River. The foothill ridges of the Tararua Range rise about 2 miles south-east of the town and extend in a general south-west to north east direction. Shannon is 20 miles south-west from Palmerston North by road (18 miles by rail) and 10 miles north-east by road or rail from Levin.

The main activities of the district are dairy, sheep, and mixed farming, and market gardening. Opiki (4 miles north-west) is the centre of a notable potato- and onion-growing area. Mangaore (3 miles south-east) is the residential township for the nearby Mangahao hydro-electric power station. Shannon is not only a small servicing and distributing centre but is also a minor industrial town. Its industries include the manufacture of butter, cardboard boxes and other containers, agricultural implements, clothing, and concrete posts.

Shannon originally adjoined extensive swamps and was a headquarters for flaxmilling. The land on which the township later stood was part of an endowment of 215,000 acres acquired about 1881 by the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company. At first the company had intended to extend its railway from Levin to Foxton, but afterwards it proceeded to develop and open up the endowment area. Accordingly, the line was laid along the present route via Shannon. The town is considered to have been founded on 8 March 1887 when the first auction of town land was held. Shannon was named after a director of the railway company. It was constituted a borough in 1917.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 1,042; 1956 census, 1,189; 1961 census, 1,398.

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

Shags are long-necked aquatic birds with hooked beaks, long, stiff, wedge-shaped tails, and webbed feet. Eight species (subdivided into 14 races) are found in and about New Zealand. Some species inhabit both fresh and salt water; others are entirely marine, and these two major groups may be distinguished from each other in life by the colour of their feet – those of the purely marine shags are pink or yellow; the others have feet which are black. Some species, such as the black shag, are widely distributed; others (especially some of the purely marine forms) are found only on particular off-shore islands. The name cormorant is rarely used in New Zealand. Identification of the various shags is often made difficult for the amateur because of strong superficial similarities and changes in plumage that occur with age and season. Sexes look alike. The young are naked when hatched, and immature birds are usually brownish and often nearly white underneath. Adults of most species are usually black with a green or purple gloss and sometimes white below. About the breeding season ornamental crests, tufts, or plumes appear and vivid face colours may develop. Shags are community nesters – freshwater species build untidy nests in trees; marine species nest on cliff ledges, low bushes, or even on the ground. Though most breeding occurs in the spring, it may take place at other seasons. A characteristic habit of shags after fishing is the “hanging out” of their wings to dry.

Probably the most familiar and widely distributed shags in New Zealand are the black (Phalacrocorax carbo), white-throated (P. melanoleucos), and pied (P. varius) of shore and inland waters, and the beautiful spotted shag (P. punctatus), of rocky coasts.

Their diet consists primarily of fish of various kinds and crustaceans, and although shags are regarded with disfavour by fishermen, especially trout fishermen, there is no doubt at all that they do no damage whatsoever to marine or estuarinc fisheries in New Zealand. Only in special circumstances is one single species – the black shag -likely to vie with man as a predator of trout, and this is probably because the sportsman is trying to maintain high fish numbers in waters not suitable for such artificially dense populations; black shags then arrive and feed on the population that exceeds the carrying capacity of the water.

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

(c. 1837–1901).

Merchant and dredging promoter.

A new biography of Sew Hoy, Charles appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Charles Sew Hoy was born in Canton, c. 1837, the son of Bing Some, farmer. As a young man he went to San Francisco, but in the early fifties he was in Victoria, Australia, where he set up business as a merchant. In 1869 he arrived in Dunedin, possibly with the idea of building up a varied trade with the large number of Chinese miners on the Otago goldfields. Before long he had a chain of stores throughout Central Otago from which the miners drew supplies and, on occasion, the finance necessary for the development of certain projects. By the early eighties, when gold returns were beginning to fall rapidly, Sew Hoy turned his attention to dredging as a means of recovering the gold that was known to lie in the river beds. In 1883 Dunedin engineers had developed a satisfactory steam dredge, but initial running difficulties and faulty methods of working gave little promise of a mining revival. Sew Hoy, however, was convinced that dredging would succeed. As principal shareholder in the Sew Hoy Big Beach Mining Co., he commissioned the firm of Kincaid and McQueen to build him a dredge in their Dunedin foundry. This was set to work at Big Beach, on the Shotover River. The early returns were so encouraging that before long Sew Hoy had three dredges working Big Beach. This marked the beginning of the great dredging boom of 1889. In later years Sew Hoy was connected with a very successful hydraulic-sluicing venture at Nokomai, near Garston, the water being brought over 20 miles in a long race from the Nevis River.

Sew Hoy was a public-spirited citizen, ever ready to support a worthy cause. In business he had a reputation for upright and honourable dealing. He died suddenly at Dunedin on 22 July 1901, aged 64. At Canton he married Soy May, by whom he had two sons.

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

(1807–79).

Coloniser, diarist, politician, and first Premier of New Zealand.

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

Henry Sewell was born at Newport, Isle of Wight, on 14 September 1807, the fourth child of Thomas Sewell, a solicitor and sometime steward of the island, and was educated at Hyde Abbey School, near Winchester. In 1826 he qualified as a solicitor and joined his father's firm. His first wife, Lucinda, daughter of General Needham, died in 1844. Sewell moved to London and married, in 1850, Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Kittoe.

He helped to set on foot the Canterbury Association in 1848 and was probably drawn into this colonising venture through his brother, the Rev. William Sewell, a Tractarian and a close friend of John Robert Godley. On Edward Gibbon Wakefield's initiative he became deputy-chairman of the Association in 1850, a full-time officer responsible, under Lord Lyttelton as chairman, for day by day administration. As dispatch writer for Lyttelton between 1850 and 1853, he contributed to the breach which developed between Godley, leading the settlement in Canterbury, and the Association, directing the enterprise from London. He censured Godley for granting land to Catholics and Dissenters for chapels and cemeteries, objected to his revision of the land regulations, and criticised him for questioning the Association's published accounts.

Nevertheless, his talent for affairs was useful. He was responsible for the 1850 Canterbury Settlement Land Act, legalising transactions between the Association and New Zealand Company. In 1852 he played some part in persuading Lord Pakington, the new Colonial Secretary, not to drop the measure to confer representative government upon New Zealand. He was also busy in this year holding off the Association's creditors, notably the Crown and the New Zealand Company, and hit upon the dubious but effective device of investing the Association's ecclesiastical fund in its own land and using this land as security for loans. With the passage of the New Zealand Constitution Act in 1852, the Association petitioned for leave to transfer its assets, liabilities, and functions to the Province of Canterbury, but the United Kingdom Government demurred until Association members contributed to pay off its debts. This was done by October 1852, Sewell's share of £250 being paid by the Duke of Newcastle.

The next problem was to effect the transfer. Sewell was sent to Canterbury, sailing with Wakefield late in 1852, to wind up the Association's affairs. After arrival, early in 1853, he became unpopular, particularly with J. E. FitzGerald, the first Superintendent, for an attack upon Godley's reputation. But he also won some acclaim for his apparently successful challenge in the Courts to Governor Grey's land regulations of 1853. In 1854 he was elected to the General Assembly as member of the House of Representatives for Christchurch.

He was highly successful in winding up the Association's affairs, acting as an unofficial legal adviser to the Superintendent and, from 1855 to 1856, as member of the Provincial Council for Lyttelton. In 1854 the Council passed the Church Property Trust Ordinance, which set up a trust to administer the land in which the ecclesiastical fund had been invested; in 1855 the Canterbury Association's Ordinance was passed, by which (after only trivial questioning of the accounts) the Association's assets and liabilities were transferred to the province; and in the same year the Canterbury Association Reserves Ordinance went through, providing for the disposal of the Association's land, in which Sewell had invested its remaining funds. All this important legislation was essentially his work.

Meanwhile his political career had commenced, even before he was returned to the General Assembly. He made his mark as a notable challenger of the Governor's alleged despotism and lawlessness. As well as the Land Regulations, Sewell agitated against the financial arrangements which Grey effected with the provinces. He held, erroneously, that the 1852 Act implicitly embodied ministerial responsibility; hence Grey, in settling the distribution of the land fund and the customs revenue before the meeting of the General Assembly, was, in fact, destroying the constitution in advance. In the course of this agitation Sewell raised the possibility of South Island separation.

His zeal for responsible government, together with his capacity for constitutional argument and his legal training, took him to the forefront of the abortive 1854 Parliament. On 14 June FitzGerald, Sewell, and Frederick Weld, as members of the House of Representatives, joined the official members of the Executive Council, but resigned on 2 August, finding they had no real power. A few days later he voted with the majority in favour of responsible government and figured prominently in the fracas which brought the session to a close. Wakefield, also a member, and influential with the hesitant Administrator, R. H. Wynyard, earned Sewell's especial denunciation.

In 1856 responsible government was conceded and Sewell, as Colonial Secretary, led an administration which lasted a fortnight. He was thus the first Premier of New Zealand. In early June, after an even briefer ministry led by William Fox, Stafford emerged at the head of an administration which was to last till 1861. Sewell was of some importance in this ministry, chiefly as Colonial Treasurer, first from June to November 1856 and again between February and April 1859. Much of the interim he spent in England, retaining his membership of the Executive Council and securing an imperial guarantee for a loan of £500,000. This, together with his part in carrying through the “Compact of 1856” distributing revenue between the Provincial and the General Governments, and giving the former the initiative in land policy, make up his chief achievements in New Zealand affairs at this time.

His official career continues through the 1860s. In 1860 he was again elected to the House for Christchurch, but resigned to become Registrar-General of Lands. Fox appointed him to the Legislative Council in 1861, where he remained until 1865, the year of his election to the House for New Plymouth, a seat he held until the dissolution of 1866. This was his final term in the House, but in 1870 Fox again sent him to the Council, where he remained until his retirement from politics in 1873. He frequently held ministerial office during this period. He was Attorney-General and Leader of the Council in the Fox Ministry of 1861–62, Attorney-General in the Domett Ministry in 1862, and again in the Weld Ministry of 1864–65. In this period he was much concerned with native policy and with the difficult relations successive ministries enjoyed with Grey during his second governorship. He supported Fox's “peace policy” and the runanga experiment of 1862; he was flabbergasted at Grey's apparent insistence that ministers take full responsibility for native policy; and he attacked the 1862–63 policy of coercion, land confiscation, and private land dealings as corrupt and designed to enrich many of its supporters. In 1866, more unpopular than ever, he took an official post, again in land registration. Between 1868 and 1870 he was once more in England, again involved in loan negotiations with the Imperial Government, despite his earlier telling criticism of the loan policy.

His longest continuous period of office occurred in the last Fox Administration, in which he was Minister of Justice from June 1870 to October 1871. In this period he came into acute conflict with the Colonial Treasurer, Julius Vogel, over the policy of heavy borrowing for development. Sewell joined the Fox Ministry after Vogel had announced his policy and soon found that it was becoming much more extensive than he had anticipated. In 1871 he argued unsuccessfully for the smaller of the alternative railway contracts and deplored the practice of letting the House itself pronounce upon works projects, holding, correctly, that this would induce a demoralising parliamentary scramble for local advantage. When Vogel came to dominate the Cabinet, Sewell refused to take Government Bills to the Council; the Premier, Fox, forced to choose between the antagonists, chose Vogel and accepted Sewell's resignation. This was not quite the end of his political career; in 1872 he was Colonial Secretary in the brief last Stafford Ministry.

In the conflict between Sewell and Vogel, two concepts of colonial government and two generations of politicians may be seen at variance. Sewell, with too much conscious rectitude for the good of his reputation, stood for caution, retrenchment, and strict probity against a new mood which seemed to him reckless, improvident, and dishonest. His strictures were not without truth, but they were without effect. His generation, which had launched self-government, was being replaced. FitzGerald had already retired; Stafford finally lost office with Sewell; Fox was soon to go; only Whitaker persisted through the 1870s and 1880s.

Sewell left New Zealand for England in 1876 and died at Cambridge on 5 May 1879. His final years were devoted to putting his private journals into shape, a voluminous and acid commentary upon men and affairs from 1853 to 1866, chiefly based upon letters sent to England during that period. It remains unpublished and is both the most important document of its kind in New Zealand history and its author's most significant achievement.

In 1874 the Otago Daily Times, welcoming Sewell's retirement with undisguised pleasure, dubbed him on the one hand “a very impersonation of vacillation and time-servitude”, and on the other “a capital departmental head”. There is much justice in either assertion. He was a man of great industry and ability – a “man of business” as Wakefield described him — but his qualities did not include tact, modesty, or selflessness. Except in private life, he endeared himself to few of his contemporaries, and almost every figure in early Canterbury and New Zealand affairs came in for a measure of harsh and often querulous criticism, either in public or in the confines of the journals. The Canterbury Association and settlement saw his talents most beneficially exercised, for here his legal and financial skill could be applied with good effect to administrative tasks. The same talents had scope in the financial arrangements he effected in the 1850s and 1860s. Further, for all his unappetising selfrighteousness, it is possible to feel that the moral criticism he levelled against the native policies of the mid-1860s and the development policies of the early 1870s was not the less cogent for being unheeded.

by William Hosking Oliver, M.A.(N.Z.), D.PHIL.(OXON.), Professor of History, Massey University of Manawatu.

• Henry Sewell's Journals (MSS), Canterbury University Library
• Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1959)
• The Richmond-Atkinson Papers, Scholefield, G. H. ed. (1960)
• New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen, Gisborne, W. (1897).

(1873–1955).

Trade union organiser, Labour member of Parliament, and Minister of the Crown.

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

Robert Semple was born in Sofala, New South Wales, on 21 October 1873, the son of John Semple. He was educated at the Sofala primary school and at an early age began work as a miner and trucker on the Australian goldfields. In 1898 he married Margaret, daughter of Thomas McNair, of Gippsland, Victoria (and formerly of New Zealand). In 1902–03 he was involved in the bitter Victorian mine strike and after the defeat of the miners and the blacklisting of their leaders he came to New Zealand, where he obtained work at the Runanga State Coal Mine, on the West Coast.

In 1907, as president of the Runanga Miners Union (and already known as “Fighting Bob”), he first met P. H. Hickey, a New Zealander who had recently returned from the west coast of the United States, and P. C. Webb, a recent immigrant from Victoria. Influenced by the syndicalist ideas of the American Western Federation of Miners, parent body of the Industrial Workers of the World, Semple, Webb, and Hickey determined to assault the arbitration system. Spreading the gospel of industrial unionism and the strike, they set to work organising a federation of all the mining unions on the coast. At the same time, for good measure, they formed branches of the New Zealand Socialist Party in many centres. Semple was president of two conferences in 1908, at Greymouth and Wellington, which established the New Zealand Federation of Miners. The following year, in opposition to the moderate Trades Councils which accepted the Arbitration Court, the organisation was broadened to include transport workers and watersiders and was renamed the New Zealand Federation of Labour. Shortly afterwards Semple became the full-time organiser of the “Red Federation”, as the militant new organisation was soon dubbed.

“In his organising and propaganda work”, P. H. Hickey wrote later, “Mr Semple was very frequently unsparing in his criticism of the craft union and its official. His forceful personality, his fiery eloquence and his extraordinary capacity for illustration stung many a reactionary official to the quick …”. His resourcefulness was such that when the Federation's weekly paper was being hard pressed for arrears of rent, he successfully negotiated to buy the building. He was not, of course, a man for delicacy or for compromise, and on two occasions he clashed with the law. In the course of the great 1913 strike he was imprisoned and subsequently bound over to keep the peace (on the highest bond, as he was proud to claim, imposed on any Labour leader); in 1916, a forceful advocate for the repeal of conscription, he was sentenced to three years' gaol and served 12 months.

He was elected to Parliament in 1918 for Wellington East as a candidate for the newly formed New Zealand Labour Party, only to lose narrowly at the general election the following year. Between 1920 and 1928, when he was again elected for Wellington East (a seat, later renamed Miramar, which he held until almost the end of his life), he was at various times engaged in cooperative tunnelling work and union organising. The break in his parliamentary career may, perhaps, have caused him to lose touch a little with the central core of Labour leadership. When the Labour Party won office in 1935, however, his appointment to the Ministry of Public Works and related portfolios was an obvious choice. After the defeat of the Government in 1949 he played no active role in Parliament. A serious operation left him in precarious health and he moved quietly about the corridors of the House and seldom spoke. He did not contest the 1954 general election and retired to live in New Plymouth, where he died on 31 January 1955. He left a widow, three sons, and two daughters.

In his early days “Bob” Semple was accounted one of the most wild and dangerous of the wild and dangerous “Red Feds”; it was not uncommon for him to be refused hotel accommodation in the course of his organising journeys. But in public estimation his early militancy is now outweighed by memories of his spectacular verbal imagery and by his popular association with the introduction of the bulldozer. He mellowed with the years both in personality and in conviction. Even in 1919 a sympathetic observer commented that “from being a rabid declamator using wild and whirling words and windmill gesticulations” he was rapidly developing into a good parliamentary debater. He remained an arresting speaker, although he sometimes overplayed the part of being a “character”. In later years he became a trenchant critic of “wreckers” who advocated direct action. His pamphlet Why I Fight Communism, published in 1948, is reputed to have sold 20,000 copies (although it may be doubted whether he wrote much of it himself). As a Minister he possessed energy and imagination and to him justly belongs a substantial portion of the credit for the modemisation of the New Zealand public works and transport systems. In all, he stands out in the Labour Movement less as a man of exceptional ability than as a strong and colourful personality.

by Bruce Macdonald Brown, M.A., New York Office, Department of External Affairs.

• Red Fed Memoirs, Hickey, P. H. (Wellington, 1925)
• Standard, 9 Feb 1955.

(1809–78).

Anglican, Primate of New Zealand.

A new biography of Selwyn, George Augustus appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

George Augustus Selwyn was born at Church Row, Hampstead, on 5 April 1809, the second son of William and Laetitia Frances Selwyn. His father, who came of a line of distinguished lawyers, was himself an eminent Queen's Council to whom was given the honour of instructing the Prince Consort in the constitution and laws of his adopted country. His great grand-uncle of the same name was the celebrated eighteenth century wit and dinerout. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Kynaston, of Witham, Essex. Selwyn was one of a family of six children, four boys and two girls.

He received his preparatory schooling at Ealing, the school also attended by the brothers John and Francis Newman. He went on to Eton, where he met William Gladstone, with whom he remained on terms of friendship for the rest of his life. Already at Eton he displayed the attributes of a gifted all-rounder; a contemporary later remarked that he was the best boy on the river and nearly the first in learning.

His career at St. John's College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted as a scholar in 1827, followed a similar pattern. He bathed all the year round in all states of the weather, earned the reputation of being a great pedestrian, and pulled number seven in the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race, held in 1829. He graduated B.A. in 1831 as second classic of his year, was elected to a fellowship of his college, travelled briefly in France, and, in May 1831, returned to Eton as private tutor to the sons of Lord Powis. He proceeded to M.A. in 1834. Meanwhile he prepared for holy orders. He was ordained deacon in 1833 and priest in 1834, and served in the parish of Windsor, first as a volunteer, later as regular curate. On 25 June 1839 he was married to Sarah Richardson, daughter of Sir John Richardson, a Judge in Her Majesty's Court of Common Pleas. They had two sons and a daughter. The second son, John Richardson (1844–98), was later ordained by his father and subsequently succeeded the ill-fated Patteson as second bishop of Melanesia.

After his marriage Selwyn resigned his fellowship, settled down to domestic life on a modest competency, and waited for the signs of preferment. A comfortable rural parsonage among the domains of Powis Castle appeared not unlikely as an immediate prospect. Instead, he accepted, both as a duty and as a challenge, the appointment of missionary bishop to the newly created diocese of New Zealand. He was consecrated at Lambeth Chapel on 17 October 1841 and, with Mrs Selwyn, their infant son William, and a small ecclesiastical entourage, left for New Zealand in December 1841, his departure providing the occasion for one of the Rev. Sydney Smith's recorded shafts of humour.

Selwyn found Anglicanism in New Zealand in a string of mission stations and left it a properly constituted province of the Church of England. He was the missionary bishop par excellence, combining zeal and energy with vision and a genius for organisation. His several visitations to all parts of his vast diocese have justly been acclaimed as feats of dedication and endurance. His first visitation was characteristic. It lasted six months Selwyn visited every settlement and mission station in the North Island; and he travelled 2,277 miles -1,180 by ship, 249 in canoes or boat, 86 on horseback and 762 on foot. Selwyn once remarked that he averaged about one confirmation for every mile of travel. His second episcopal tour took him 3,000 miles, mostly by sea in tiny schooners, and he visited all the settlements in the South Island, including the isolated sealing stations on Ruapuke and Stewart Islands, and the remote Chathams.

A slip of the pen had inadvertently placed the northern boundary of Selwyn's diocese 34° N instead of 34 S of the equator; and, the error not being revoked, his spiritual responsibilities extended far into the Pacific. Selwyn welcomed the added obligation, prayed that his diocese would become the missionary centre of the Southern Ocean, and, between 1847 and 1851, made four annual cruises among the savage islands of Melanesia, travelling more than 24,000 miles in a 17–ton schooner. During his visit to England in 1854–55, he greatly advanced the work of the Melanesian mission by enlisting the services of the Rev. John Patteson and securing, through public subscription, the Southern Cross as a mission schooner.

Selwyn was deeply convinced of the importance of cathedral institutions. One of his first acts after his arrival in New Zealand was to establish the Theological College of St. John's for the instruction of young men of both races studying for admission to holy orders. In 1850 the Rev. Charles Abraham, close friend of Selwyn during his Eton tutorship, arrived from England and took charge of the college. As the Melanesian mission grew, so did the number and diversity of the native scholars receiving instruction: 10 different languages were spoken at St. John's in 1854. Selwyn developed plans for the establishment of a second theological college at Porirua on land donated by the Ngati Raukawa, but this project came to nothing.

Throughout his episcopacy Selwyn applied himself to the task of creating an organisation and a form of government that would attend to all matters spiritual and temporal touching the Church of England in New Zealand. He took the initial steps in 1844 when he convened his first synod; the final form of the constitution was adopted by the General Assembly in 1858 and brought into operation at the first general synod in 1859. During the late fifties and early sixties, too, the original diocese was progressively subdivided into more manageable episcopal units. Only in respect of its endowments was the Church less than fully self-supporting when Selwyn left the country in 1868.

Selwyn's contribution to the colony was by no means confined to his episcopal duties and the spiritual care of his flock. He took a leading part in the major constitutional and political issues of the time. Especially on all matters touching the rights of the Maori he was both vigilant and well informed; and his advice was often sought by successive Governors and leading men in the administration of the colony. If he believed the actions of governments or settlers to be mistaken or mischievous he did not hesitate to make his criticisms known; in 1847 he entered a timely protest against the land regulations that accompanied Earl Grey's proposed constitution; during the Waitara dispute and the subsequent Taranaki War he incurred the bitter reproaches of the settlers and the censure of the local government for his public defence of Wiremu Kingi. His own explanation of his efforts at mediation between the two races is eloquently recorded in his Pastoral Letter … to the Members of the Church of England in the Settlement of New Plymouth, written in September 1856.

Several times, when relations between the races were in danger of degenerating or had already degenerated into armed conflict, Selwyn's high sense of duty took him to the scene of disturbance. In March 1845, upon receiving word of the destruction of the town, he hastened to Kororareka and, with the Rev. Henry Williams, ministered to the wounded of both sides and did much to calm the fears of settlers in the north. Later in the same year, with Wellington under the threat of attack by Te Rangihaeata and the Rev. Octavius Hadfield removed by illness from his post, Selwyn took up temporary residence at Waikanae in an effort to preserve the peace. At the request of the Governor he went to Taranaki in August 1855 to do what he could to bring peace to the contending Maori parties in a land dispute that threatened to end in fighting. During the Waikato War he acted as military chaplain to the troops; but his sacramental comfort was administered to Pakeha and Maori alike. The Waikato War and its aftermath brought bitter disappointment to Selwyn in his missionary labours among the Maori people. As he witnessed their alienation from the Church and then, under the influence of the Hauhau cult, their apostasy, he felt himself to be “watching over the remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith”.

But the post-war problems of the Church in New Zealand were not to receive his attention. Selwyn was summoned to attend the Lambeth Conference, which was held in September 1867, and while in England was persuaded to succeed Lonsdale as Bishop of Lichfield. He was enthroned at Lichfield on 9 January 1868. He returned to New Zealand, made his farewells, and, on 20 October 1868, amid scenes of great sorrow and affection, he departed.

For the remaining 10 years of his life Selwyn devoted himself with unabated vigour to the care of an overburdened diocese. As he had done in New Zealand, in Lichfield he brought episcopal influence to bear on the remotest hamlet. He succeeded in introducing synods into the various counties of his diocese; and through his mission work among miners, railway navvies, prisoners, and bargees emphasised the obligation of the Church to men of all sorts and conditions. Characteristically, he distinguished himself by his exertion and his conduct on the occasion of the Pelsall Colliery accident in 1872.

Selwyn died on 11 April 1878 and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral. Bishops Abraham and Hob-house assisted at the burial service and the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and Sir William Martin were among the pallbearers. As a memorial to his life and influence Selwyn College, Cambridge, was erected by public subscription and incorporated by royal charter in 1882. Selwyn's portrait, by George Richmond, R.A., belongs to St. John's College, Cambridge.

Gladstone said of Selwyn that he reintroduced among the Anglican clergy the pure heroic type. His ideal was a disciplined, duly ordered Church community, and to this ideal his many gifts were completely dedicated. As deacon, priest, and bishop he laboured to strengthen the cathedral institutions of the Church and, through synodal action, to bring the influence of bishops to bear on the laity of all classes as well as the clergy. Roman Catholicism and ritualism were alike repugnant to him; he regretted but tolerated Dissent; and while he prayed for the ultimate union of Christians he set himself the more limited objective of securing peace among the sects.

His frank, manly, and engaging character excited admiration, and many anecdotes are recorded that testify to his generous spirit. His handsome, athletic physique was of equal advantage in the drawing room and in the wilds of his colonial diocese; he was as acceptable to sawyers and sailors as to society ladies. (He was said to have acquired an amount of nautical knowledge that would not have disgraced an admiral. He always kept regular watches when travelling by sea.) He had a masterly power of organising and arranging, combined with the happy art of inspiring others with zeal for his own aims and views. He did not entirely escape the defect of his own virtues, however, and was accused by some of being overbearing in the face of opposition. He was an impressive speaker and had a genius for apt quotation; his sermons delivered before Cambridge University in 1854 were particularly esteemed for their conviction and eloquence. His personal ethics were probably fairly indicated in two sentences which he once offered as advice to all young men: “Be temperate in all things”, and “Incumbite remis” (“Bend to your oars”).

by William Leslie Renwick, M.A., Inspector of Primary Schools, Wellington.

• Letters from Bishop Selwyn and Others, 1842–67 (four vols. typescript), Turnbull Library
• Selwyn Papers, 1839–65 (typescript), Turnbull Library
• Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn, Tucker, H. W. (1879, two vols.)
• Bishop Selwyn, Curteis, G. H. (1889)
• Churchman Militant, Evans, J. H. (1964).

(1810–70).

London agent, Canterbury Provincial Government.

Selfe was born on 15 November 1810 at Rose Hill, near Worcester. His original surname was Page, but he changed it to Selfe on succeeding to his maternal grandmother's property at Trow-bridge, in Wiltshire. He was educated at Glasgow University and was called to the Bar in 1834. Selfe practised at the Oxford Circuit and at the Parliamentary Bar till 1856 when he was appointed Magistrate at the Thames Police Court, London. In 1863 he exchanged this position for the Westminster Court, where he remained until his death. In 1858 he was associated with Colonel ffrench and Mr Aspinall Turner on the Weedon Commission, which inquired into the state of the Army Clothing Department and the defalcations in war stores sent to the Crimea.

Selfe was an active member of the Canterbury Association and became honorary London agent for the Provincial Government. He resigned in 1866 because he thought he had been placed in a false position by Bealey's failure to give him necessary information about the railway loan. In January 1867 the Provincial Government voted him an honorarium of £500. He bought a land order for 100 acres and left the selection and management to FitzGerald and John Cordy. This was R.S.91, selected at the foot of the hills at Heathcote. John Cordy looked after the practical details, such as building a house and stocking it. Selfe's work in London was very valuable for Canterbury. Many wrote him letters giving him their ideas on the qualifications of various people for public offices, and he must have been considered a safe and reliable man to be entrusted with such personal material. Selfe had hoped for the judgship which was actually bestowed on Gresson, and there is much correspondence on the subject. FitzGerald concluded it by writing that Chapman did not resign, so the scheme fell through.

Selfe accompanied Lord Lyttelton on his trip to Canterbury in 1867–68. He died at 15 St. George's Square, London S.W., on 6 September 1870. At the time of his death he was governor of Rugby School and a director of the London Board of the New Zealand Trust and Loan Co.

In 1840 Selfe married Anna Maria, eldest daughter of William Spooner, Archdeacon of Coventry and Rector of Elmdon, near Rugby, and they had four sons and three daughters. One of his sons, James, emigrated to Canterbury. His third son, Sir William Lucius Selfe (1845–1924), after a brilliant career at Rugby and Corpus Christi, Oxford, became a noted Judge in the English County Courts and was, for a time, the principal Secretary to the Lord Chancellor (Lord Cairns).

Selfe was an astute lawyer and his decisions, which were marked by equity and commonsense, were accorded great respect by his fellow magistrates and by the public. His kindly and charitable sympathies won the esteem of all who met him, while his pleasant wit often enlivened the monotony of public business. Though his services as Canterbury provincial agent were discharged quietly and did not draw the attention that his public life did, they were no less valuable to the colony. His interest in the Canterbury settlement (his brother-in-law was the Archbishop of Canterbury) and his personal knowledge of the principal settlers enabled him to use his wide contacts in the political, church, and business worlds to help the colony in its difficult early days.

by George Ranald Macdonald, Retired Farmer, Kaiapoi R.D.

• Selfe Letters (MSS), Hocken Library
• Men of Mark in New Zealand, Cox, A. (1886)
• Old Christ-church, Andersen, J. C. (1949).

(1845–1906).

Liberal politician and Premier of New Zealand.

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

Richard John Seddon, Premier of New Zealand for 13 years, was born at St. Helens, Lancashire, on 22 June 1845. His father was master of the Eccleston Grammar School; his mother, also a school teacher, was a Scotch woman from Dumfriesshire. In spite of, or possibly on account of, his parents' profession, the boy proved so difficult and unpromising a pupil that he was removed from school at the age of 12. For two years he worked on a farm and then became an apprentice at the workshops of Dagleish and Co., ironfounders of St. Helens. There all went well for a while until Seddon fell foul of the management over a question of increased pay for apprentices, and was dismissed. After working for a short time at a Liverpool foundry, he became seriously ill with smallpox, and on recovery was unable to find employment. At this time he was continually hearing Australia spoken of as a land where employment was plentiful and well paid, and where a poor man might still make a fortune on the goldfields. At the age of 18, Seddon decided to emigrate and in 1863 he worked his passage to Melbourne on the Star of England, a large sailing ship.

After a short and unsuccessful prospecting expedition to the Bendigo goldfields, Seddon settled down to a job in the Government railway workshops at Williamstown, near Melbourne. The situation held out little prospect of advancement, and his engagement about this time to Louisa Jane Spotswood inspired him to more adventurous courses. Gold had recently been discovered on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. In February 1866 he sailed for Hokitika.

On arrival he tried prospecting for a second time without success, and then set up a store at Big Dam by the Waimea Creek. Returning to Melbourne at the end of 1868 he married Louisa Spotswood and brought her to the new home. The store does not appear to have been a very paying proposition although, in 1872, he expanded the business by obtaining a licence to retail liquor. His lack of success as a trader was probably due to the fact that his heart was always in politics. In 1870 Seddon failed to get elected to the Westland County Council. He did, however, win a seat on the Arahura Road Board, of which he became chairman in the following year and, in that capacity, exposed more than one case of graft. On the goldfields he was already renowned as an athlete and fist fighter. Tales of his feats of strength and endurance spread abroad and gave his name a certain prominence. Inexperienced as a public speaker and only moderately endowed with natural eloquence, he was at least loud voiced and extremely fluent. With these two attributes and a popular cause to uphold, he secured election to the Westland Provincial Council in 1874 as advocate for the provision of a better water supply on the goldfields. But Provincial Government was on the verge of extinction, and Seddon's zeal for politics diminished as the Council's life drew to a close. When the provincial system gave place to the counties system in 1876, Seddon found a seat on the Westland County Council. His early activities as a member of that body scarcely added to his reputation, and his frequent absence from council meetings was a cause of comment.

There were reasons for this backsliding. A great deal of litigation with regard to mining claims took place on the goldfields. Lawyers were not easily persuaded to undertake cases involving long journeys and small fees, and in consequence it became customary for litigants to appoint lay-advocates to conduct their cases before the Gold-fields Warden. Seddon displayed an astonishing natural aptitude for legal work, and since about 1874 there had been a growing demand for his services as lay-advocate in the Warden's Court. Fresh interests of another kind claimed his attention in the winter of 1876 when he staked a claim on the newly discovered goldfield of Kumara, and soon afterwards went to live there, transferring his publican's licence from Big Dam, and establishing the Queen's Hotel at Kumara. A town sprang up rapidly beside the new goldfield, and when it was constituted a borough in 1877 Seddon became its first Mayor. By that time its gold-rush population was already beginning to decline and tradesmen faced a period of recession. Seddon's earnings at the Warden's Court being insufficient to make up for his losses elsewhere, he was obliged in 1878 to file a petition in bankruptcy, but a settlement with his creditors was soon arrived at.

He had been an unsuccessful candidate for Parliament in 1876. After dissolution following the fall of Sir George Grey's Government in 1879, he stood again for Hokitika as a supporter of Grey and was one of the two candidates elected. With characteristic lack of diffidence he made his maiden speech (which filled 19 columns of Hansard) only a few days after taking his seat in the House. In 1881 he was prominent in the great “stonewall” directed against Sir John Hall's Representation Bill. In the general election of that year he was returned for the newly created constituency of Kumara which he continued to represent until 1890. By that time he had become influential among the group of Members of Parliament who were in process of coalescing as the Liberal Party under the leadership of John Ballance. When the maritime strike broke out, Seddon spoke strongly in favour of the strikers, and even went so far as to advocate nationalisation of the country's shipping lines and coal mines. At the general election of 1890, held on the morrow of the strikers' defeat, Seddon was returned for Westland, the seat he was destined to retain for the rest of his life.

As soon as it became evident that the Liberals could command a majority, Ballance formed a Government in which Seddon assumed the portfolios of Public Works, Mines, Defence, and Marine. Being anxious to dispel any alarm that might have been caused by his recent revolutionary utterances, he abjured all subversive intentions, deprecated governmental extravagance, and made drastic departmental economies. His most important reform was the institution of the cooperative contract system on public works. He travelled ceaselessly throughout the country, making countless speeches, and his name and presence became more familiar to the public than those of any other Minister. When Ballance fell ill he was chosen to act as Premier in preference to W. P. Reeves. When Ballance died in April 1893 the Cabinet chose Seddon to be his successor. Sir Robert Stout rather than Reeves was Seddon's most formidable rival, but at the time in question he was not a Member ‘of Parliament. Ballance was said (for what the gesture was worth) to have nominated him for the succession, and many well-informed persons believed that Seddon had agreed merely to act as caretaker, but although Stout found a seat in June, the party caucus, held soon afterwards, confirmed the Cabinet's choice of Seddon as Premier.

Having pledged himself to carry out Ballance's policy, Seddon embarked with obvious reluctance upon two important reforms – the enfranchisement of women and a regulation of the licensing system. It is unlikely that either measure contributed greatly towards his striking success at the general election of 1893; but other prospective reforms, notably those concerning land settlement and industrial relations, were being held up by the Legislative Council, and the electors showed their disapproval of reactionary obstruction by giving the Liberals an overwhelming majority. Seddon made further attempts to settle the vexed licensing question in 1895 and 1903, but found it impossible to satisfy both “wet” and “dry” parties. Much of the legislation for which his Government became famous was not of his authorship, but its passage was always facilitated by his able management and firm control of the party machine. His immediate concern upon resuming office was to extend his power both in this and in other respects. In 1894 he revised the Parliamentary Standing Orders with a view to making it less easy for the Opposition to carry out a “stonewall” of the kind he and his friends had operated to obstruct Hall's Representation Bill. He squashed the extra-Parliamentary Liberal Associations which sought to dictate Government policy; and insisted that he personally should have the right to select the party's parliamentary candidates. After a long struggle with the Governor-General, Lord Glasgow, he managed to pack the Legislative Council with men committed to the promotion of his policy, and he took care that friends of the Government should predominate in the Civil Service.

Until 1895 Seddon continued to reside in the remote mining town of Kumara, and it was not until he had been Premier for two years that he moved permanently to Wellington with his wife and family, consisting of three sons and six daughters.

Before the general election of 1896, at which the Liberals' majority was considerably reduced, Seddon had already introduced his first Old Age Pensions Bill. It came to grief in Committee, and in 1897 he tried again with no better fortune. Not until his third attempt, made during the following year, did the Bill become law in face of a determined “stonewall” by the Opposition. This was Seddon's greatest legislative achievement.

Though having had little previous experience of dealing with the Maori people, he assumed the portfolio of Native Affairs in 1893. Much native land lay unused, while the demand for lands for European settlement grew ever more insistent. This demand Seddon was determined to satisfy, but with a minimum of hardship or injustice to the Maori, at that time generally regarded as a dying race. Between 1893 and 1897 his Government bought from them an area of more than 1,500,000 acres. To enable them to participate more fully in the management of their own lands, he established District Councils with native representation, but the system was never a great success.

Soon after he became Premier, Seddon's mind began to dwell upon colonising in the Pacific. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade Britain to annex Samoa and allow New Zealand to administer the island group; later he tried and failed to secure the incorporation of Fiji with New Zealand. His policy of expansion was not encouraged by the Imperial Government and he had to be content with annexing the Cook Islands in 1901. His imperialism grew both fervent and strident as the century drew to a close. At the Colonial Conference of 1897, he and Sir Edward Braddon of Tasmania were the only colonial Premiers to give qualified support to Chamberlain's proposal for a Council of Empire to which the colonies should send plenipotentiaries. When war broke out in South Africa, he fanned the flame of jingoism in New Zealand, and the Colony sent, in all, eight contingents to the scene of hostilities. On his way to attend King Edward's coronation and the Colonial Conference of 1902, Seddon visited South Africa at Lord Kitchener's invitation. Peace negotiations were in process when he arrived and he caused great embarrassment in some quarters by publicly demanding that the Boers should surrender unconditionally. On arriving in England he embarked on a whirl of activity, both social and political. In spite of a tendency to patronise and give advice, he became a firm favourite with the British public whose attention he courted on every possible occasion. After returning to New Zealand he grew profoundly disappointed at the British people's cool reception of Chamberlain's proposals for tariff reform in 1903. In consequence, the intention he had often expressed of granting specially favourable terms for British imports was not carried out with great effect. Instead of granting a 10 per cent reduction of duty on British goods, his Government merely imposed additional duties on foreign imports.

Applicants for the old age pension had to be very poor and thoroughly deserving in order to qualify as recipients of 7s. a week on attaining the age of 65, but payments to those found eligible began to be made in 1899, and doubtless the gratitude of the destitute, combined with the upsurge of patriotism roused by war, helped the Liberals to win a resounding victory in December of that year. During the remaining seven years of his life Seddon was to win two more electoral victories, in 1902 and 1905, each one more complete than the last.

When the new century began, the era of reform had practically come to an end. Excepting Ward, the outstandingly able men whom Ballance had gathered round him were gone, and Seddon, never much inclined to welcome strong-willed subordinates, presided over a Cabinet of nonentities. He himself, besides being Premier, held the portfolios of Finance, Education, Immigration, Defence, and Labour. In the last-named capacity he passed several measures designed to ameliorate the conditions of labour, among which may be mentioned the Shops and Offices Act of 1904 and its amendment of 1905. He also amended several times the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. The free place system in secondary schools was introduced while he was Minister of Education. He was directly responsible for establishing a State Fire Insurance Office and State Coal Mines with their own sale depots. As Minister of Immigration he was always on guard against what he believed to be a deadly threat – the yellow peril which, within his own particular political sphere, meant an excessive number of Chinese immigrants. His policy of expansion in the Pacific was largely frustrated by the Imperial Government's restraining hand, but his interest remained fixed upon any of the islands of Oceania that appeared at the time likely to be available for annexation. Latterly Seddon failed to move fast enough along the path of reform to satisfy the more radical sections of his own party, and at the same time he persistently refused to reconstruct his Cabinet with a view to securing more willing cooperation from the left. The result was that a new left-wing party, the Political Labour League, came into being in 1904. Seddon did his best to discourage the movement which made little headway during his lifetime.

The state of his health had already given cause for anxiety more than once when he faced a general election for the last time in December 1905. Doctors had warned him that he must live less strenuously, but it was not in his nature to do so. In May 1906 he sailed for Sydney to open up negotiations with the Federal Government on the question of commercial reciprocity, and to arrange for a joint protest by Australia and New Zealand against Britain's action in signing the New Hebrides Convention with France. His assurance that the trip would prove restful was soon belied. After 24 exhausting days spent in negotiating, travelling, and attending official functions, he boarded the Oswestry Grange at Sydney. The ship sailed for Wellington early on 10 June. Seddon died suddenly of heart failure the same evening.

When young he had been a fine athlete. A man of just under 6 ft in height, with exceptionally powerful chest and arms, he ran to fat in middle age, but retained his youthful agility to a degree that was remarkable in view of his corpulence. He was a mighty feaster with little regard for moderation in eating and drinking, and during the last 10 years of his life his weight was never far short of 20 stone.

“Diversion,” writes W. P. Reeves, “he appeared neither to have nor want. I cannot recall hearing him talk of any non-political subject for ten minutes.” It is a fact, however, that he was very fond of deep-sea fishing and, when on tour, took every opportunity of indulging in the sport. He loved to take the floor at dances that were not attended by fashionable society; at convivial parties he would entertain the company with song far into the night; after an exhausting day's work he would keep yawning secretaries awake playing euchre, his favourite card game. Late in life he kept horses and used to go riding when business permitted.

His education had been elementary. In adult life he seldom read anything that was not immediately relevant to the business in hand, but though indifferently literate he possessed to a remarkable degree the capacity for grasping the essence of an intricate question. His public speeches were rambling and verbose, and often contained solecisms. He never entirely lost his Lancashire accent, or became cured of the habit of dropping aitches where they should have been and inserting them where they should not – occasionally with startling effect.

He had been initiated as a Freemason in Pacific Lodge, Hokitika, in 1868. Thirty years later he was elected to the office of Grand Master of New Zealand, and his two years' occupancy of that position was one of the most successful periods in the history of Grand Lodge.

Few other extra-political activities diverted his attention from the main chance. Power was the mistress to whom he paid undying devotion. Had he been responsible for the Old Age Pensions Act alone his record as a legislator would stand high, yet it was as manager of the party machine that his ability showed to greatest advantage, and the greater part of his energy was always devoted to gaining control of the sources of power. The basic source was the people's goodwill which Seddon courted assiduously by what might be termed perpetual electioneering. In this pursuit he travelled the length and breadth of the country incessantly. A wonderful memory for names and faces, secured against possible error by the prior promptings of an efficient secretary, enabled him to establish personal contact with a phenomenally large proportion of the electors. His political morality was not immaculate; his patriotism was unduly blatant; the principles of democracy that he advocated so zealously found no place in his Cabinet, his party, or in any institution over which he exercised control; yet the autocratic power he acquired was seldom abused in the larger sphere of Government, and his statesmanship was always guided and governed by a genuine love of humanity.

by Randall Mathews Burdon, M.C. (1896–1965), Author, Wellington.

• The Life and Work of Richard John Seddon, Drummond, J. (1906)
• King Dick — A Biography of Richard John Seddon, Burdon, R. M. (1955)
• Democracy in New Zealand, Siegfried, A. (1914).

Traditional

The old-time Maori dried karengo and cooked it as a sort of relish, as Japanese and Welsh coastal dwellers use related species of Porphyra under the names of amanori and laver bread. Bull kelp provided a valued receptacle. A large plant yields a leathery sheet 2–3 ft long by a foot wide by ½ in. thick, and the middle honeycomblike layer is easily slit through to convert the sheet into a bag of rubbery texture. In such a bag the skinned bodies of dozens of young muttonbirds can be preserved, the full sack being protected by an outer wrapping, as of long strips of totara bark.

Colloid Extracts

(a) Carrageenin. New Zealand has about 20 species of Gigartina, closely related to the Irish moss or carrageen of commerce. Technically red seaweeds, they are mostly of a dark-purplish colour when alive, but easily bleach almost white if kept damp in the sun. After soaking in fresh water and boiling for a short time, the fronds easily break up and the liquor sets to a jelly on cooling. A purified extract called carrageenin is extensively produced on the Atlantic coast of North America and is widely used as a stabiliser in chocolate milk and such beverages. The varied properties of New Zealand's many species have not been exploited, but several kinds are gathered, especially from Otago southwards, for making jellied milk puddings, and some dessert preparations are made for sale. Some have proved suitable ingredients in toothpaste, and a few breweries use local seaweed for finings.

(b) Agar. Certain red seaweeds, particularly members of the Gelidiaceae, contain a polysaccharide of large molecular weight and side linkages, called by the Malayan name of agar or agaragar. Extraction requires long boiling or cooking under pressure and impurities are removed by filtering, dialysing, and freezing. A 1–2 per cent agar solution characteristically sets at a low temperature. The jelly, however, remains solid at a comparatively high one, giving a range between about 35 and 90°C where either solid or liquid state can be had at will; further, no permanent change results from sterilising at high temperatures. Agar is familiar as the clear firm jelly in which some canned meats are set. The most important use is for culture media on which fungi and bacteria can be grown for therapeutic and research purposes, and no adequate substitute has been found. For many years Japan supplied the world's requirements, but following research during wartime shortages New Zealand began to produce agar, and from 1945 an export worth some thousands of pounds annually was developed. Two seaweeds are used, mostly Pterocladia lucida and, in smaller quantities, the finer P. capillacea, both collected chiefly from North Island coasts and dried and baled like hay for selling. Air-dry weed yields about 30 per cent agar, which is sold as a fine powder. The gel strength is high and the ash content low.

(c) Alginates. Alginic acid and its salts are colloids extracted from the larger brown algae. None is produced in New Zealand, though some local kelps have a high algin content, for instance, 40 per cent of dry weight in bull kelp and 20 per cent in Macro-cystis pyrifera, the latter a species harvested for alginates on the Californian coast. Alginates are used in the food, paint, pharmaceutical, adhesive, and polish manufacturing industries.

Fertilisers

In some maritime countries seaweeds are used for manuring the land. Some supply potash (to 30 per cent KC1 in dry weight) and iodine (to 0.4 per cent) as well as organic matter, though dry meal of two species has been shown to immobilise inorganic nitrogen in soils. Seaweed is used in many home gardens, the best being Macrocystis and the long-stalked Ecklonia. The green sea lettuce, Ulva, thrives in water contaminated with organic matter, and from such places it can act as nitrogenous manure. In sewage outfall areas Ulva can increase to nuisance proportions, especially when it accumulates in putrefying windrows about high-tide level.

by Lucy Beatrice Moore, M.SC., Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Lincoln.

• Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, Vol. 57 (1926)
• Ibid., Vol. 60 (1930)
• Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Vol. 69 (1939), “Reference Lists of New Zealand Marine Algae”, Laing, R. M.
• Proceedings of the Seventh Pacific Science Congress, Vol. 5, Botany (1953), “The Utilization of Seaweed in New Zealand”, Schwarz, E. F.
• Plant and Soil, Vol. 12 (1960), “Studies in Manurial Values of Seaweeds”, Francki, R. I. B.