The land claims included one for 20 million acres lodged by the New Zealand Company. This organisation, a product of the colonising theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, was responsible for the founding of settlements at Wellington in 1840 and Nelson in 1841. Wakefield's influence had earlier led to the formation of an association to colonise New Zealand, but an attempt to gain legislative backing from the British Government in 1838 failed. The Association was then dissolved and some of its promoters formed the New Zealand Company which sought a charter from the British Government. The charter was not then forthcoming and the company, deciding to act on its own initiative, sent a preliminary expedition led by Colonel William Wakefield to purchase land as the site for the first settlement. Colonel Wakefield's party reached Wellington Harbour in September 1839 and negotiated successfully with a number of Maori chiefs for land on both sides of Cook Strait. Shortly afterwards the first body of immigrants left England and arrived at Wellington Harbour on 22 January 1840, a week before Hobson reached the Bay of Islands. Land in the Wellington settlement had been offered for sale in London on 1 June 1839 and sold rapidly.

A remarkable feature of this sale was that it took place before the company had bought the land. The result was that the settlers arrived to find the land unsurveyed and the Maoris disputing title to much of it. Investigations into the company's claim to have purchased 20 million acres in all continued for several years, and the purchase of only a small proportion of the area claimed was finally recognised. Meanwhile, the disputed land purchases led to fighting and threats of fighting at each of the company's settlements – Wellington and its satellite settlement at Wanganui, New Plymouth, and Nelson where the so-called Wairau massacre took place.

Early in 1841 the company received its royal charter allowing it to buy and sell land, and authorising a Crown grant of 4 acres for every £1 it spent on colonising.

In 1841 a subsidiary body, the Plymouth Company, founded a settlement at New Plymouth, and church settlements were established on Wakefield principles, with the assistance of the New Zealand Company, at Otago in 1848 by the Otago Association, an association of lay members of the Free Church of Scotland, and at Canterbury in 1850 by the Canterbury Association promoted by the members of the Church of England. Of the major settlements by 1850 only Auckland, which grew rapidly following its proclamation as the seat of Government, was not a planned Wakefield settlement.

Wakefield believed that progress in a new settlement largely depended on the controlled interplay of labour, land, and capital. This could be effected through the sale of land at a “sufficient price” instead of being granted free. The price should be high enough to force labourers to work for landowners for a number of years but not so high as to prevent the thrifty labourers from becoming landowners themselves. The sale of land was to provide revenue for Government and funds to finance the immigration of other labourers. Wakefield claimed that the disposal of land would result in a demand for labour to develop the land and at the same time would provide the funds to import the labour. It proved impossible to fix upon the “sufficient price”, and the high proportion of absentee owners in the early company settlements meant little demand for labour. But the value in Wakefield's theories lay in acceptance of the policy that land should be sold and the revenues used for public works and immigration, and that a policy of selective immigration should be followed.

The early phases of Government land administration were determined by royal instructions issued on 16 November 1840 and given effect to by the Governor, who remained in direct control of the administration of Crown land until 1849, when the first Commissioners of Crown Lands were appointed to assist. The royal instructions authorised the survey of the colony, the creation of reserves for public purposes, and the sale of land either to persons paying the purchase money to the Treasury in New Zealand or to the Government Agent of the colony in London. Relatively few sales took place before 1853 but the principle of selling land rather than making free grants was followed, and both Crown and New Zealand Company land was sold at a minimum price of £1 an acre. Pastoral licences were on an annual basis at the outset but were authorised for 14-year terms in 1851 at an annual fee of £1 for each 1,000 sheep depastured.

Investigations into purchases of land from the Maoris to determine their validity added to the uncertainty of the land title position and held up the progress of European farming. At the same time, limited funds available to Hobson meant that the Crown was unable to buy much land to resell to new settlers. With old and new settlers and the Maoris all dissatisfied with the situation, Hobson's successor, Governor Robert FitzRoy, on 26 March 1844 waived the Crown's right to pre-emption and authorised individuals to buy land from the Maoris, subject to the payment to the Crown of 10s. an acre, reduced in October 1844 to a penny an acre.

FitzRoy was recalled and replaced by Captain (later Sir) George Grey, who in 1845 restored the Crown's right of pre-emption to bring some control over the confused land situation in the North Island. The pattern of land purchase Grey introduced worked well, with the Government's Land Purchase Commissioners negotiating purchases at tribal meetings with large numbers of Maoris signing the deeds of sale – this was necessary because of the complicated nature of Maori land ownership. Under Grey the Crown bought large areas of land in the North Island and almost all of the South Island, and only in Taranaki and Auckland was insufficient land bought to meet the settlers' demands.

Earliest European settlement was of a transitory nature, but in time European traders established themselves mainly at the Bay of Islands, and many bought land from the Maoris. Missionaries were also among the earliest purchasers of land as early mission stations became centres of permanent European occupation and farming. Transfers of large blocks of land were few. But when it seemed likely that the British Government, despite its reluctance, would assert the sovereignty of the Crown over New Zealand, the country's first land boom began. In 1837, for instance, Captain William Hobson, sent by Governor Bourke of New South Wales to protect the Bay of Island settlers during a Maori tribal war, reported that the increasing white population had acquired considerable possessions of land from the Maoris. Trade in land reached a peak in 1839, Sydney traders indulging in what they called “bona fide speculation” but in what officials called “land sharking and grabbing”.

The era of uncontrolled land purchase was, however, coming to an end. On 14 January 1840, while New Zealand was under shadowy jurisdiction of New South Wales, Governor Gipps issued a proclamation forbidding future land sales except to the Crown. Subsequently, land commissioners were appointed to investigate all purchases. A similar proclamation was issued by Hobson on 30 January 1840, following his arrival at the Bay of Islands as British Consul. On 6 February the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by some 50 Maori chiefs who yielded to the Crown the sole right to buy their lands – “the exclusive rights of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them in that behalf”. On 9 June 1841 Hobson terminated the New South Wales Land Claims Commission and took power to appoint a similar commission. Possibly to challenge the official actions, a new land syndicate had been formed in Australia by William Charles Wentworth and John Jones, and on 15 February 1840 these two men signed an agreement with five Maori chiefs who transferred the ownership of virtually the whole of the South Island and Stewart Island for a cash payment of £100, and a 50 annuity for the principal chief and lesser amounts for the others.

The total area of all alleged purchases cannot be accurately ascertained because the Land Claims Commissioner in his report of 1862 stated that “some claims were estimated in round numbers, by millions of acres or by degrees of latitude and longitude, or by the expression ‘as far as a cannon shot will reach’”. It seemed obvious that many of these claimants were speculators who gambled on receiving a Crown title to at least some of the land they claimed.

The history of land legislation and settlement in New Zealand reflects the social, economic, and political pressures of the times. In the earliest years of planned settlement, attempts were made to put into practice the colonising theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield by charging a “sufficient price” for land. In 1853, to meet the urgent need of the infant colony for population, Governor Grey initiated a policy of providing cheap land for settlement. This policy and concentration on pastoral farming in time brought about the problem of undue aggregation of farm land. The development of dairying in the 1880s, coupled with unemployment in the towns, saw the Liberal Government adopt a policy of closer settlement to aid the establishment of small farmers. Since then, land settlement policy has been based on the principle of “one man, one farm”, and land legislation has been directed towards closer settlement of farm land and the prevention of undue aggregation. Since 1929 the State has gone beyond its previous role of subdividing and financing settlers on to undeveloped land and has, itself, carried out large-scale land development work before offering the land for settlement. Experiments in land settlement have been numerous, and legislation voluminous and complicated, successive Governments leaving a legacy of diverse tenures for Crown land. Because of this involved history only the more important trends are outlined.

This article deals in turn with early land purchases before 1840; settlement from 1840 to 1852; the provincial era until 1876; the period of early general Government legislation until 1890; Liberal land policy for closer settlement, 1891–1911; settlement since 1912; and present-day land policy and development.

Land companies in the Waikato were closely bound up with the Auckland financier, Thomas Russell, whose name was also linked with the establishment of the Bank of New Zealand, the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, and the New Zealand Insurance Company. Others associated with the financing of land speculation and land development in the Waikato included James Williamson, Frederick Whitaker, Josiah Firth, and Every McLean. The principal companies were the Waikato Land Association, the Auckland Agricultural Company, and the Thames Valley Land Company. In 1890 a return prepared by the Commissioner of Taxes showed that these three companies held over 350,000 acres of freehold in the South Auckland area. Included in the Thames Valley Land Company's holdings was the controversial Patetere Block on the edge of the pumice country. The history of these companies followed a familiar pattern. Formed to develop the land for sale, most of it in scrub and swamp, they were caught by the general decline in prices, the unexpectedly high costs of development, and the inability of the Waikato soils to sustain permanent pastures or to grow satisfactory annual crops. By the early 1890s most of the estates had fallen back into the hands of the Bank of New Zealand, and the depreciation in the value of these assets and the inability to realise upon them was a major factor in bringing about the bank's difficulties in 1893 and 1894. Formed to dispose of them, the Assets Realisation Board's task in carrying out this function was of course assisted by the rise in prices from 1900 onwards and particularly by the expansion of the dairy industry.

In the Waikato successful closer settlement was very dependent upon raising the fertility of the soil by topdressing and this did not become common until the years immediately before 1914. Despite their shortcomings, however, the land companies made an important contribution to the development of the country, especially in areas where such a task was beyond the resources of the individual settler. This was especially significant in the Waikato where the cost of development was high. The improvement programme on the estates included clearing the scrub, ploughing up the land and, after a winter fallow, working it up in the spring. Any pastures so established were giving an indifferent return after three years and had to be broken up again. Dairy farming was impracticable in the 1880s and the return from sheep and beef cattle, especially the latter, was limited; all attempts to establish a system of mixed farming on the South Island model had little success. And yet without the development work carried out by the companies, the establishment of the dairy industry in the Waikato would have proceeded more slowly. Topdressing, the farm separator, and the milking machine made the one-man dairy farm an efficient unit; but the dairy industry in the Waikato was established after the initial development work had been done by the land companies.

Apart from its association with the pioneering of the frozen meat and dairy industries, the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, and those in the Waikato, did much to raise livestock quality. The Levels Corriedale stud dates from the 1870s and the company also imported the first Aberdeen-Angus cattle.

During the political controversy over closer settlement in the eighties and nineties, the land companies were the target for constant and often unfair criticism as they appeared to be the personification of the two evils of aggregation and absenteeism. Despite the pioneering work that they accomplished, it was evident by the 1890s that the New Zealand social and political climate was hostile to them. Within a decade or so they had ceased to be a conspicuous part of the rural scene.

by Patrick Russell Stephens, M.A., Economics Section, Department of Agriculture, Wellington.

• History of Northern Southland, Hamilton, G. A. (1953)
• New Zealand Banker's Hundred, Chappell, N. M. (1961)
• South Canterbury—A Record of Settlement, Gillespie, O. A. (1958)
• William Saltau Davidson, 1846–1924—A Sketch of his life …. in the Employment of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company Limited, Davidson, W. S. (1930)
• New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Vol. 75, July 1947, “Farming in New Zealand—Topdressing”, Miller, J. M. (an account of the Waikato land companies).

The New Zealand Agricultural Company was established in 1878 when both the freehold and leasehold portions of several stations between Gore and Lumsden were amalgamated. The directors of this company included a number of men prominent in politics and business in Dunedin such as William Larnach and Henry Driver, Robt. Stout, acting as the company's solicitor. The objective was to develop the land and dispose of it on profitable terms. This same group of men also financed the construction of a railway from Gore to Lumsden. From the beginning the company's affairs came in for criticism as Julius Vogel, the then Agent-General in London, accepted a position on the board of directors, this leading to a peremptory demand from the Premier, Sir George Grey, that he sever all connection with the company. The New Zealand Agricultural Company was not very successful financially, the depression of the 1880s and 1890s and the rabbit invasion reducing the return from farming operations and discouraging land sales. The last sale took place in 1909, the Company's affairs having been administered by a liquidator for a good many years.

The New Zealand and Australian Land Company was undoubtedly the most successful of the land companies and it still controls two pastoral properties in the South Island, although its major interests for many years have been in Australia. In the early 1860s a number of unincorporated societies in Scotland held land in Otago and Southland, and James Morton, a Glasgow merchant, set about amalgamating them. The New Zealand and Australian Land Company was formed by the amalgamation of these holdings, the company's interests in Australia being in the form of large pastoral holdings. The new organisation embarked on a programme of further buying, but its farming operations did not prove very profitable and in 1867 Thomas Brydone, who had a wide measure of experience in estate management, came out from Scotland to reorganise affairs. By that time the company owned seven large properties – Edendale, Clydevale, Kawarau, Moeraki, Totara, Ardgowan, and Kurow, as well as a number of smaller ones.

James Morton also had interests in another organisation, the Canterbury and Otago Association which owned five properties – Acton, the Levels, Pareora, Hakataramea in Canterbury, and one Deep Dell in Otago – all of which proved very profitable. In 1865 a young man, William Saltau Davidson, had come out to New Zealand in this company's service and by 1878 was overseeing all its affairs in New Zealand. In that year by special Act of the Imperial Parliament the two organisations were amalgamated, with Davidson the manager in Scotland and Brydone in New Zealand. The importance of these two men lies in their role in the establishment of the frozen meat industry. The company itself faced some difficulties immediately after the amalgamation, as the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, in which Morton was involved, created some lack of confidence in the company's position.

Apart from its pioneering work in the establishment of the frozen meat and dairy industries, the company's efforts during the 1880s were devoted to the profitable management of its holdings, the selling of land being less attractive on a falling market. In the 1890s and the first decade of this century, the company disposed of its agricultural holdings in New Zealand, a number being acquired by the Government as part of the land for settlement scheme, the balance of the Levels estate being so acquired in 1903.

Land companies played an important part in the agricultural development of New Zealand during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, although few of them were successful financially. Experience in North America had shown that land in areas being opened up for settlement, provided a degree of political and economic stability had been attained, was an extremely profitable investment. These companies were, for the most part, far from being merely speculative enterprises, for their objective was to develop land to the stage where it could be successfully settled by the individual farmer. The companies that were established with the idea of buying and developing land must be distinguished from those organisations, such as the Bank of New Zealand, which became large landowners by default, having advanced money over-generously to land company clients. When these found themselves in difficulties, the financial house had to take over the security.

(Pseudopanax crassifolium).

Heteroblasty, or the character of having two or more distinct kinds of shoots, especially where the juvenile differ from the adult, occurs in many New Zealand plants. It is in fact one of the features of the vegetation and is not confined to any particular genus or family but is widespread. No plant possesses it more markedly than lancewood. This small tree grows in lowland and montane forest and shrubland throughout the three islands. The juvenile form is a characteristic of shrubland on the edge of forest.

In its adult form it is a small, round-headed tree, sometimes reaching a height of 40 ft. The trunk, which seldom exceeds 1 ft in diameter, is quite naked below the crown. Leaves are about linear or linear-oblong, 3–8 in. long, and are usually distantly toothed. There is a long-persisting juvenile form with a slender, unbranched main stem which gives off long, linear, deflexed rigid leaves which have large, sharp teeth. These leaves can be up to 3 ft long. Male and female flowers are on separate plants. They are very small and are in compound umbels.

There are two somewhat closely related species. P. ferox, a rather rare and local tree occurring from about latitude 35° southwards, has the same juvenile form as that of lancewood, except that the teeth are larger and hooked. The adult leaves are scarcely toothed. P. lineare is a shrub of high altitude forest or scrub. Leaves of juvenile plants ascend and the margins are wavy rather than toothed.

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

Lamprey (Geotria australis) is not a true bony fish like the similarly shaped eel, but a primitive survivor of an archaic group that has successfully withstood competition from the more specialised true fishes. The lamprey differs from true fishes in the total absence of paired fins, jaws, and other bony structures, the “backbone” being represented by its primitive forerunner, the “notocord”. The mouth is a roundish sucker, armed within by series of rasping teeth, with sharper and stronger ones on the tongue. There are no scales and the skin is slimy. In habits the lamprey is as revolting as is its appearance, for it is predacious. It fastens its disc-shaped mouth to the victim and rasps away the flesh, not eating the tissue but confining its efforts to extracting blood and juices.

Lampreys spend part of their lives in the freshwater rivers and streams, and part in the sea. The eggs are laid far up the rivers, but during its growth the young lamprey descends the river by easy stages and is almost of adult size upon reaching the sea. In the next stage the lamprey spends a certain time in the sea, taking on a new appearance, with a bright silvery and blue coloration. As the breeding season approaches the now adult lampreys, about 18 in. in length, ascend the rivers, gradually losing their bright colours and resolving into a dirty brown.

Maoris esteemed the lamprey as food and formerly captured large numbers of them during the seasonal migration or “runs”, which normally occur at night.

A related but larger species, the hag fish, (Eptatretus cirrhatus) is of similar habits, is larger, and exclusively marine.

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

(1889– ).

Nursing administrator.

A new biography of Lambie, Mary Isabel appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Mary Isabel Lambie was born in Christchurch on 26 October 1889 and educated at the Christchurch Girls' High School. Her first training as a nurse was done at Christchurch Hospital, but in 1918 she became a school nurse with the Education Department. Transferring to the Health Department she trained in 1925 at Karitane Hospital, Dunedin, before being sent the following year by the Department to Toronto University for a course in public health nursing. After further training at St. Helen's Hospital, Wellington, she became a registered midwife. With this wide experience she was appointed Nurse Instructor and Supervisor of Public Health Nursing in 1928, and Director of the Division of Nursing in 1931, a post she held till her retirement in 1950. In 1937 she received a Rockefeller fellowship to study nursing in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and she has visited the Pacific Islands several times to advise and report. She has been a member of several boards and organisations associated with her specialisation, such as the Dietitians Board, the Occupational Therapy Board, Lepers Trust Board, and the South Pacific Health Board. She was the first vice-president of the International Council of Nurses, 1947–53, Chairman of WHO Expert Commission on Nursing, 1950, and a member of the International Florence Nightingale Foundation Council, 1947–53. Until recently she was also a member of the Board of Governors of Wellington Girls' College. She published an account of her professional life in My Story (1956). She was made a C.B.E. in 1950.