As at present constituted, the Royal Society of New Zealand is a federation of 10 autonomous societies, nine of which are regional bodies promoting general science (Auckland Institute, and the Wellington, Canterbury, Otago, Waikato, Hawke's Bay, Rotorua, Nelson, and Southland branches of the Royal Society of New Zealand); the tenth member body is the Geological Society of New Zealand. The members of these societies are members of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Besides their 14 representatives, the Council comprises the Minister (ex officio), four Government representatives, two representatives of the Society's Fellows, a co-opted member, the honorary treasurer, the president and two vice-presidents (elected by Council), and the immediate past president. The Society employs a full-time secretary and a library assistant. Meetings of Council are held in May and November, and a standing committee of Wellington councillors meets monthly. The Society receives an annual grant from Government and other income from member bodies, sale of publications, and trust funds.

The Royal Society of New Zealand, founded in 1867 as the New Zealand Institute, is the senior scientific organisation in the Dominion. A statutory body for the promotion of science, it performs in New Zealand the functions of an academy of sciences. The Society acts for scientists as a whole, independent of occupational or disciplinary affiliations, in offering the experience and advice of its members to Government on national problems, in representing New Zealand science internationally, and in serving New Zealand scientists in such ways as publication of research, maintenance of a library, and the administration of research grants and memorial awards.

The New Zealand Institute Act of 1867 established “an Institute for the advancement of Science and Art in New Zealand”. The Institute was a corporate body consisting of a board of governors and the members of societies in various parts of the colony that were subsequently incorporated under the Act. The Act stated that the Institute “shall comprise a public museum, laboratory, and public library” in Wellington, and it authorised the Governor to appoint persons to superintend and carry out a geological survey. The Colonial Museum, then recently established for the collections of the Geological Survey, was granted to the Institute. Dr J. Hector (later, Sir James) was appointed Director of the Colonial Museum and Geological Survey and Manager of the Institute; he discharged these duties until his retirement in 1903. The incorporated societies, at first comprising the Auckland Institute, Wellington Philosophical Society, Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, and Westland Naturalists' and Acclimatization Society, later included the Otago Institute and similar bodies founded in other centres for promotion of art and science. The Institute received a statutory grant and published annually a volume containing papers read before the incorporated societies, the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (Vol. 1, 1869). An Act to reconstitute the New Zealand Institute, passed in 1903, sundered the three institutions that had grown under Hector's management and reconstituted the New Zealand Institute as an independent organisation with an elected president and a board of governors on which members appointed by the incorporated societies were in the majority. In 1903, by gracious approval of His Majesty King George V, the Institute was reconstituted as the Royal Society of New Zealand, with a council including the Minister in Charge of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, four Government nominees, and a majority of councillors appointed by member bodies.

Royal Commission is a type of investigating agency that is used by the Government of New Zealand when it wishes to investigate certain matters outside normal parliamentary or political agencies, usually for the purpose of obtaining as public, as accurate, and as impartial an investigation as possible. Such a Commission, as its name implies, is an authority formally appointed by and responsible to the Crown through its agent in New Zealand, the Governor-General. The decision as to whether or not a Royal Commission should be constituted to investigate any matter rests as a rule in the absolute discretion of the advisers of the Crown, but there are certain occasions when its appointment is mandatory under statute, e.g., the Civil List Act of 1950.

There are no restrictions on the subject-matter which a Royal Commission can be called upon to investigate except that it has been held by the Courts that the Crown cannot set up such a Commission substantially for the purpose of determining whether or not a person has committed a crime. A Royal Commission can only inquire into such matters as are specified in its warrant of appointment or are reasonably incidental thereto, and it does not have a general roving jurisdiction. Although there are no restrictions on the number or the nature of the personnel that may be appointed to form the Commission, in practice it is usual for persons to be appointed who are not active politically, and it is usual also for the number and the ability of members to be increased in proportion to the difficulty and importance of the subject; normally also the chairman of a composite Commission has legal training. Although it was doubtful whether a Commission had this power at common law, Parliament has, by the Commissions of Inquiry Act of 1908, specifically empowered Royal Commissions to have the power of a Magistrate in the course of a hearing, including particularly the power to command persons to attend before it and to produce such documents as it requires, and to fine for failure to so appear. Moreoverl the same Act protects each member of a Roya, Commission from proceedings against him for anything he might say or report bona fide in the discharge of his duties.

Royal Commission differs from another type of commission – a Commission of Inquiry – which is sometimes appointed to present an impartial report to the Government. The difference is that, in law, a Royal Commission is appointed by and responsible to the Crown and not the Governor-General in Council, and it can investigate – subject to the one exception mentioned earlier – any matter, whilst a Commission of Inquiry is restricted to the topics stipulated in the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1908. The main distinction in practice between the two is that a Royal Commission, being more formal in creation, is usually established to consider more important and national issues than fall to a Commission of Inquiry. Thus, for example, in 1955 a Royal Commission was appointed to report on the monetary, banking, and credit system in New Zealand, but a Commission of Inquiry was appointed to investigate an accident on the Black Prince.

Both the Royal Commission and the Commission of Inquiry have been used quite frequently by New Zealand Governments (approximately 20 Royal Commissions and 28 Commissions of Inquiry between 1945 and 1965), to ascertain facts or clarify principles with a view to determining whether Government action is necessary and, if so, what it should be; but they are subject to criticism on the grounds of delay and expense.

by Donald Edgar Paterson, B.A., LL.M.(N.Z.), LL.M., J.S.D.(YALE), Lecturer in Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law, Victoria University of Wellington.

• Finding List of New Zealand Royal Commissions and Commissions of Inquiry, Jamieson, D. G. (1961)
• Finding List of Royal Commission Reports in the British Dominions, Cole, A. H. (1939).

: On 8 March 1949 the Minister of Works announced that a site near Coal Creek Flat had been chosen for a hydro-electric dam on the Clutha River. A temporary township – soon afterwards called Roxburgh Hydro – sprang up on Coal Creek Flat later in the same year and construction of the dam began. The river was diverted to a temporary channel during the winter of 1954, and by 1956 the main works were completed.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 1,309; 1956 census, 3,043; 1961 census, 488.

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

Roxburgh is situated in Central Otago on the west bank of the Clutha River near the junction of its east-bank tributary, the Teviot River. The town occupies a terrace and is surrounded by hills and mountains. The railway station and a small residential area are situated on the east bank of the Clutha, and this settlement is called Roxburgh East. Roxburgh is the terminus of a branch railway line which links with the South Island Main Trunk line at Clarksville, and is 61 miles north of Milton and 97 miles north-west of Dunedin by road or rail. Alexandra is 27½ miles north-east, and Roxburgh Hydro 5 miles north by road.

The main primary activities of the district are sheep farming and fruitgrowing. Stone, pip, and berry fruits are produced. Roxburgh is a servicing and distributing centre for the central Clutha basin. The only industrial activities of importance in the town are sawmilling and joinery manufacturing. Roxburgh is the headquarters of the Teviot irrigation works on which the fruit industry largely depends. There is a sawmill at Ettrick (8 miles south-east), and a fruit-canning works and an opencast lignite mine are located at Coal Creek (3 miles north).

The Roxburgh district is believed to have been a camping place for Maori travelling parties in pre-European times. Nathaniel Chalmers, who came down the Clutha River on a mokihi raft in 1853, was probably the first European visitor. The pastoralists slowly penetrated the interior and about 1859 the first sheep, imported from Australia, were brought up from Port Molyneux. Following the news of Hartley and Reilly's gold discoveries at the Dunstan in 1862, there was a rush to the area and much of the traffic passed through the Roxburgh (Teviot) district. When Andrew Young and James Woodhouse discovered gold in 1862 at the junction of the Teviot and Clutha Rivers, mining camps sprang up on both banks of the Clutha above and below the Teviot junction. Dredging on the Clutha River began in 1862–63 and at the time of the dredging boom (c. 1900), upwards of a dozen dredges were working in the district. During the early 1880s hydraulic sluicing and elevating were also employed in the Teviot area. By 1920 the gold mining activities had practically ceased. The town of Teviot, which is said to have taken its name from a large sheep station bordering the east bank, began soon to spread to the west bank of the Clutha, and before the end of 1863 there was a sufficient traffic between both parts of the town to maintain a ferry service. The new town on the west bank is said to have been laid out in 1866 by a surveyor named Johnston who is credited with calling it Roxburgh after an ancient ruined town on the Teviot River in Scotland. In July 1863 a road through to Alexandra via Roxburgh from Lawrence, on the east bank of the Clutha River, was being used, and in April 1865 a coaching service began between Dunedin and Clyde. In the late 1860s improvements were made to the easier route along the west bank and by 1871 the road was fit for use by coaches. This route eventually became the main highway. The branch railway from Clarksville to Lawrence was completed in 1876, but it was not extended to Roxburgh until 1928. On 7 July 1874 Roxburgh was proclaimed a municipality and in 1877 was constituted a borough.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 751; 1956 census, 794; 1961 census, 769.

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

The New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association's annual report for 1962–63 shows that its active membership is 1,564 and that there are also 145 schoolboys rowing for clubs.

by Samuel Irwin Kidd, Hon. Treasurer, New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association, Wellington.

Although competition against overseas crews of world class is the only real way of attaining the standard necessary to win world or Olympic titles, expense has been a serious problem. Over the past 10 years the standard of rowing in New Zealand has improved greatly, due to several factors: first, to the increasing number of proficient oarsmen being trained in secondary schools; secondly, to the use of better equipment and more efficient coaching methods by the various clubs; and, thirdly, to competitors passing on the fruits of their overseas experience to fellow club members.

In recent years rowing has obtained a growing following in secondary schools. In 1947 the rowing council donated the Maadi Cup, won by the New Zealand Army eight in Egypt, for competition among secondary schools' eight-oared crews. The rowing medals and oars won by Archbishop R. Owen have also been presented as trophies for schoolboy competitions. In this connection it may be noted that, of recent years, most of New Zealand's champions and representatives began rowing at school.

To be successful in overseas competitions, especially in eight-oared events, it is necessary to give crews intensive training beforehand. As few rowing clubs are strong enough to produce sufficient men of world standard, the New Zealand Rowing Council has had to arrange the training of crews drawn from clubs throughout the country. In 1961 the council formed a squad to train for the eights at the British Commonwealth Games in November 1962. This crew's success at Perth encouraged the council to sponsor a similar training programme for the 1964 Olympic Games at Tokyo. During the 1963–64 season the crew competed at the various regattas in order to qualify for selection for the Olympic Games at Tokyo.