(Astraea heliotropium).

This aptly named shellfish requires no description. It grows to 4 in. across and is found throughout New Zealand.

Dead shells are frequently washed ashore, but living ones are obtainable only by dredging in from 10 to 40 fm.

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

Agitation for the Government censorship of films and posters began about 1911. Some titles and film posters were rather lurid, but exhibitors censored their films with discretion so that those who went expectantly to see such films as The White Slave Traffic (“adults only”) came away disappointed. The Cinematograph Film Censorship Act of 1916 provided for the censorship of films and its amendment in 1926 for the censorship of posters. The various regulations were consolidated in the Cinematograph Films Act of 1928, and in 1956 the Censorship Regulations were revised on the advice of the Film Censor, Gordon Mirams, to provide for five classes of certificate: (G) Approved for general exhibition; (Y) Recommended as suitable for persons aged 13 and over; (A) Recommended as suitable for adults only (persons aged 16 and over); (R) Screening restricted to persons over a specified age or to a specified class of audience; and (S) Recommended as suitable or unsuitable for a specified class of audience. These provisions make it possible for the Film Censor to reduce the number of excisions and to give guidance, especially to parents, as to the suitability of particular films. The (R) certificate covers most of the controversial films and the (S) certificate gives the censor the opportunity to recommend films especially suitable for children or family audiences. Appeals against the Censor's ruling may be made to a film appeal board.

New Zealanders in 1960–61 went to the pictures about 18 times per head of population. There were some 46,000,000 admissions to 511 theatres for a return of £5,396,000. The organisation of the motion picture industry has been the subject of reports by parliamentary committees in 1934 and in 1949. Most of the city theatres and many suburban theatres are controlled by Kerridge-Odeon or by Amalgamated Theatres Ltd. Smaller suburban and country theatres are controlled by independent exhibitors. Exhibitors obtain their films from film distributors who distribute the films of overseas producers, collect rentals, deduct expenses and charges, and remit the balance to the producing organisations. There is no customs duty on the importation of films, but the film distributors pay a film-hire tax – 10 per cent of their net receipts for British films and 25 per cent for foreign films, and exhibitors pay an amusement tax which is included in the price of admission. In 1961–62 the film-hire tax amounted to £190,000 and amusement tax for cinemas to £493,000. Both film distributors and cinemas are licensed by the Cinematograph Films Licensing Authority.

The Film Industries Board consists of four members of the Motion Picture Distributors Association, four members of the Exhibitors Associations, and a retired Stipendiary Magistrate appointed by the Minister of Internal Affairs. It acts as a tribunal to settle disputes between distributors and exhibitors and advises the Government on matters concerning the motion-picture industry. The Cinematograph Films Act of 1961 consolidated and amended the legislation relating to cinematograph films and brought into statute law important matters of principle formerly included in regulations.

Television was established in New Zealand in Auckland, Christchurch, and Wellington in 1961, and in Dunedin in the following year. The programmes consist largely of cinema films or films specially made overseas for television. An increasing proportion is of films made in New Zealand to cover local events. It is too soon to estimate the influence of television on cinema attendance or its importance in education.

by Walter Bernard Harris, M.A., DIP.ED., DIP.SOC.SCI., formerly Supervisor Teaching Aids, Department of Education Wellington.

The introduction of sound films in 1929 brought great changes. Audiences appreciated the greater reality of films such as The Jazz Singer and Broadway Melody and attendances at the cinema increased. On the other hand the sound films threw out of work a large number of musicians. The silent films needed some musical accompaniment, and, as early as 1906, the Royal Albert Hall in Auckland advertised “living pictures with Gaumont Chronophone Sound Accompaniment”. As the phonograph of the period was not sufficiently pleasant or powerful, most exhibitors relied on a pianist playing “mood music”. There was generally an “effects man” with a variety of devices such as wind machines, thunder sheets, and coconut shells to make the sound of horses' hoofs. The better cinemas provided orchestras, quartets, and singers of such quality that many patrons went to listen to the music rather than see the films. Fuller's Pictures in 1908 engaged the Edgar Collins Orchestral Band to accompany the films, and in 1912 for Hayward's Pictures in Wellington “the Adelphic Ladies' Orchestra discoursed sweet music”. Some silent films were distributed either with suggestions for appropriate music or with full music and effects scores which required competent professionals.

In the 1920s the cinema organ, the “mighty Wurlitzer”, with a wide range of effects, replaced some orchestras or supplemented them, but the standard of music in the cinemas continued to improve in all the larger cities until the advent of “talkies”. Amongst the best-known orchestras was that of Alfred Bunz, who conducted an orchestra of 23 players in the Crystal Palace, Christchurch, and the orchestra of Maurice Gutteridge, in the Regent Theatre, Auckland. From 1928 there was little employment for professional musicians, except in broadcasting and in the National Orchestra, which was established in 1951.

The use of 16-mm films was fostered by the introduction of non-flammable acetate film, by the use of films for training during the Second World War, and by the establishment of the National Film Library by the Department of Education. The Library began in a small way in 1942 and was fully established in 1945 and is now one of the largest in the world. From 1942 to 1963 the Library was directed by W. B. Harris. It lends films free of charge to about 4,000 organisations and schools and, from a stock of some 25,000 prints covering more than 4,000 titles, issues about 200,000 reels of film a year. The National Film Library also assists the Federation of Film Societies, which comprises 56 film societies with a total membership of about 3,500. Smaller and more specialised 16-mm film libraries include the Services Film Library, the libraries of the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture, and the film libraries of some oil companies, diplomatic missions, and church groups. There are also several commercial film libraries which hire out 16-mm copies of feature films. The National Film Archives are housed in the National Film Library. The archives was established in 1961 and is controlled largely by the Archives Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs. Unfortunately most of the early films made in New Zealand have been destroyed. Those that remain include a few newsreels, such as of the Napier and the Murchison earthquakes, four of Rudall Hayward's films – The Te Kooti Trail, Bush Cinderella, On the Friendly Road, and Rewi's Last Stand, Pauli's Under the Southern Cross, and Pacific Films' Broken Barriers.

Only a few feature films have been produced in New Zealand, largely because of the difficulty of obtaining sufficient finance. The leading producer has been Rudall Hayward, a son of Rudall George Hayward of West's Pictures and Hayward's Picture Enterprises. His films include My Lady of the Cave (1922), Rewi's Last Stand (silent, 1925), The Te Kooti Trail (1927), Bush Cinderella (1928), On The Friendly Road (1936), and Rewi's Last Stand (sound, 1939). Prominent New Zealand actors in the Hayward films were Gordon Campbell, Patiti Warbrick, Stanley Knight, the first “Miss New Zealand”, Dale Austin, of Dunedin, who played the principal part in Bush Cinderella, and Ramai Te Miha, who played the Maori heroine in the sound version of Rewi's Last Stand and who later became Mrs Hayward.

Other New Zealand feature films included Hinemoa, produced by George Tarr about 1914, Just as the Sun Went Down, produced about 1915 by Frank Davenport, The Birth of New Zealand, produced by Harrington Reynolds about 1920, The Kid From Timaru, produced by Barry Marshall, about 1919, and Under the Southern Cross, made in 1925 by the Swedish producer, Gustav Pauli. About the same time Pauli produced what was said to be the best film of Hinemoa. The first New Zealand film with a sound track, Under Southern Skies, was released in its sound version in 1929. Most of the feature films of this period were photographed by Charles Newham, Frank Stewart, or Bert Bridgman. Two feature films have been produced by New Zealanders since 1952, when John O'Shea and Roger Mirams of Pacific Film Productions made Broken Barriers, a film on the race relations of Maori and European. New Zealanders. In 1964 John O'Shea was again the producer for the film Runaway.

In the past 20 years short sponsored films, mainly on industrial topics, or for tourism, have been made by such firms as Pacific Film Productions, Robert Steele Motion Picture Productions, Hayward Film Productions, Morrow Picture Productions (animated cartoons), Reynolds Film Productions, Apex Films (A. Riddock) and Roy Evans Films. Such films have been made both for the commercial cinema and for users of 16-mm sound projectors, which were introduced about 1937. The introduction of television in 1961 has stimulated several small organisations to produce 16-mm films, mostly for commercial advertising.

In 1907 the Government Tourist Department employed J. McDonald to make some newsreels on New Zealand subjects to send overseas. The Government Photography Office, under the control of the Department of Agriculture until 1923, made several films, such as Flax Growing at Foxton and Milling Kauri Timber. It then became a part of the Publicity Office, which was later incorporated in the Tourist Department. Its studios were in the basement of Parliament Buildings but, after a fire there, the Photography Office was transferred to the ABC Building in Lambton Quay, where another fire occurred. The nitrate films of the day were so highly inflammable that the Cinematograph Regulations, dealing with safety, were administered by the Chief Inspector of Explosives. An arrangement was then made by the Government with A. A. P. MacKenzie (who established Filmcraft Studios at Miramar, Wellington) to process the films made by Government photographic officers who had accommodation on the premises. In 1936 the Tourist Department bought Filmcraft Studios, which became the Government Motion Picture and Advertising Studios. They produced for the 1940 Centennial One Hundred Crowded Years, a 55–minute sound film re-enacting the history of New Zealand. The next year the New Zealand National Film Unit was established at the studios to help to publicise the war effort. E. S. Andrews was the first producer, and Bert Bridgman the chief cameraman. The assistant producer was C. J. Morton, who has been engaged in making Government films since 1923. A. G. Scott, first sound engineer of the Film Unit, succeeded Andrews as producer in 1950. From 1941 until 1950 the Film Unit produced 459 Weekly Reviews, which was changed then to a monthly Pictorial Parade. Both are 10–minute newsreels covering three or four topics. In addition, the National Film Unit makes each year several short feature films of 10 to 40 minutes in length on New Zealand subjects. They are of a high standard, and amongst those which have won awards at international film festivals are: We Lead the World (tractor accidents), Jetobatics (Air Force display), Snows of Aorangi (ski-ing at Mount Cook), The Long Lake (Wakatipu), Snowline is Their Boundary (high-country sheep farming), and Skyhigh in New Zealand (the Mount Cook region).

As far as is known, the first commercial film screening in New Zealand took place on 7 November 1896, when J. F. Macmahon showed moving pictures on “Edison's Cinematographe” in High Street, Christchurch. This was less than a year after the world's first film show given in Paris by the Lumière brothers. The programme included Traffic in Broadway, Wheelwright at Work, and Sandow the Strong Man. The first motion pictures to be taken in New Zealand were made, it is claimed, by A. H. Whitehouse in 1898. In that year he filmed Uhlan winning the Auckland Cup, and also the opening of the Auckland Exhibition. In 1901 the Salvation Army Film Unit of Australia made a film of 3,360 ft of the visit to New Zealand of the Duke and Duchess of York

In the early years of the century films were usually shown as an item in the popular vaudeville shows by organisations such as Rickard's Vaudeville Co. (1904) and Fuller's Vaudeville Co. (1905). In 1905 “West's Pictures and the Brescians” came to Dunedin from Edinburgh with a show that was “above-all refined” in which the singing and playing of the Brescians filled half the programme and short films filled the other half. The 80-minute film programme consisted of 14 short films, including documentaries such as Firemen at Work in London, travel films, Tour Through Italy, and In Barcelona Park (in “stereoscopic kinematography”), an instructional film, Busy Bee – Every Phase of Bee Culture, and a comedy, Burglar and the Girls. It concluded with an outstanding film of the period, Trip to the Sun, an early space thriller and trick film produced by the Frenchman, Herbert Melies. It had been hand coloured by a line of women, each painting one tint. The brothers Henry and Rudall Hayward, senior, were active members of West's pictures and later developed the chain of theatres known as Hayward's Picture Enterprises.

There were a number of itinerant exhibitors in the early years who screened short films at vaudeville shows from projectors set up in the body of the hall. The illumination for these early films was limelight produced by a flame of oxygen and hydrogen played on a revolving disc of limestone which became incandescent. West's pictures were the first to introduce the electric arc lamp. At first their dynamo had to be worked by a traction engine, and in each small town a traction engine had to be hired. Later, portable generators worked by petrol motors or motorcars provided power for carbon arcs. Perry's Biorama exhibited all over New Zealand the films made by the Salvation Army. Lurid posters, such as The Drunkard, advertised the show, and the Salvation Army band marched through the town to the door of the cinema where a chugging red petrol engine provided power and added to the novelty and excitement of the occasion.

By 1911 picture shows were “everywhere, in the city and suburbs and all doing big business”. Continuous pictures were being shown in specially built cinemas. Prints of the early films could be bought by any exhibitor, but by 1911 leading exhibitors, such as Fullers' Pictures and Hayward's Picture Enterprises, had obtained exclusive rights to certain films and screened them in the chains of theatres under their control and rented them to independent exhibitors. The pattern of cinema organisation was established.

Simple and inexpensive cinematograph cameras were available early in the century and many exhibitors made short films of local interest to attract local audiences. Some of them included items of wider interest made by cameramen in other parts of New Zealand and so there developed a number of newsreels such as the Auckland Animated News, and the Empire News, Dunedin. None of them seems to have lasted very long.

In New Zealand this tropical group of singing insects is represented by one genus, Melampsalta, and they occupy all the available habitats from the coastal rocks and partly fixed dunes, to subalpine scree and rock. M. leptomera, a very thin-bodied, rather drab insect with a very weak song, lives as an adult deep in clumps of marram grass and pingao. M. cruentata, with a red-banded abdomen, green veins on the wings, and a red or pink base to the wings, is reluctant to take flight and is found on fixed dunes and low altitude clearings in the bush throughout New Zealand. Its song is accented in the first note with a long series of unaccented notes following. Although the insect is usually only about 1.4 cm long, material in collections suggests the presence of giant races, almost 1.8 cm long, in several localities. A particular feature of this insect is a very high proportion of males to females. The commonest cicada both in North and in South Islands, M. mudta, is found in open country and is very variable in colour. Its song is shrill and consists of an initial accented note followed by three or four unaccented notes, the whole set repeated continuously. Moderately timid, it usually takes flight on close approach. The colour of the male varies from pale brown, through black-banded deep green, to red brown and nearly black, a yellow or silvery median stripe from the head to the tip of the abdomen being a characteristic feature. The veins of the wings are pale to dark red brown and the base of the wings is buff. The female is invariably much larger than the male, and varies in colour from ochre through pale olive to pale green.

Insects of both sexes usually rest on grass stems but may also be found on herbs and shrubs. On trees and shrubs commonly at the margin of low-level forests in the North Island is a handsome bright-green, hairless insect with two fine black lines outlining the outer margin of a pair of very indistinct olive-green central lozenges on the thorax. This is M. ochrina (1.7 cm) which has a languid, almost lisped song of a long series of unaccented notes. In spite of its softness the song is audible at surprising distances. M. ochrina is slow to take flight but its protective coloration makes it difficult to locate. A highly variable group of green insects of the same size as M. ochrina and larger (1.7–2.5 cm) is represented by cicadas at present classified as subspecies of M. muta, subalpina, and cutora. They are probably members of a separate species. Extreme forms in the South Island approach 2.5 cm in body length. The green body colour is marked by a varying development of black lozenges on the thorax, black bars on the abdomen, and widely varying hairiness. They invariably lack the median silver or yellow stripe on the thorax and head. Its song, like that of ochrina, has a languid tone composed of an initial accented note followed by from two to six unaccented notes. Like ochrina it is found at the lower margins of the forest, but darker and hairier types occur also in the upper alpine scrub. M. cingulata (3.0 cm), New Zealand's largest cicada, commonly gathers on the trunks of trees in large numbers, singing day and night in a deafening chorus that can be heard a quarter of a mile away or more. A feature of the song is a loud wing click. The forewing is strongly angled on the leading edge and there is a black blotch on the forewing, one near the tip and another on the hindwing near the base. The body colour varies from yellow to olive and clear green, with black bars on the abdomen, and four well-developed lozenges on the thorax. The lozenges may be more or less strongly veined with brown.

M. strepitans (North Canterbury, Marlborough, and Wellington) is a smaller (2 cm) relative with similar angle and spotted wings, inhabiting rocky cliffs and river beds. Its body colour is brown, barred with black. The decoration on the thorax differs chiefly in the detail of the central portion of the pattern. Its song is harsh and shrill, without clicks. M. cauta (2.1 cm) is an insect of the trees of lowland forest; its song is harsh and loud and the insect is very timid, taking flight at the approach of possible danger. Its body colour is olive green with silver stripes on the abdomen and spots on the thorax. Both inner and outer lozenges on the thorax are somewhat reduced being replaced by olive brown. This tendency is further developed in M. scutellaris (1.6 cm), a bronze-green species in which the outer lozenges are olive brown with black veins and the inner marked by a black line and central spot. The song of M. scutellaris consists of an equally accented pair of notes monotonously repeated. It is found in tall shrubs, particularly manuka at the forest margin, and can be heard in the tops of the trees of the forest itself. In Auckland and North Auckland the commonest cicada found in open places, and in decreasing numbers further south in the North Island, is M. sericea (1.5 cm) which rests not only on grass but also on shrubs and mud and rock banks and house walls. It is somewhat smaller in size but similar in shape to M. muta but its voice is much louder and its song more diversified in volume and rhythm. The very extensive outer lozenges and the merging central lozenges of the thorax and the dull-brown body colour make the insect appear blackish. There are eight currently identified alpine species of cicadas. These are all very dark and hairy with fat heavy bodies. Only one, M. cassiope, occurs in both islands; the others are confined to the South Island, most with restricted distributions. Recent collecting suggests that this number should be increased.

On the under surface at the rear of the abdomen the female cicada is equipped with a short ovipositor, a spear-like appendage with a flattened diamond-shaped point, used for making elongate slits in the stems and leaves of plants in which the eggs are laid, four or five to a cavity. Some species of cicadas at least are thought to lay several hundred eggs each. Upon hatching, the minute larva escapes from the egg chamber and descends to the ground. In the ground the larvae, which possess a cylindrical proboscis and large claw-like forelegs, grows through several moults. The New Zealand species are believed to feed on the juices of plant roots – few observations, however, have been made. The last stage before emergence of the perfect insect is the formation of a nymph, rather similar to the larva but with rudimentary wings and harder skin. In late spring and summer the nymph emerges from the ground, climbs some distance up bank, grass, stem, or trunk; the skin splits on the back of the thorax and the adult insect emerges with wet crumpled wings and soft skin; the wings dry and harden and the adult insect finally flies away. Although there appears to be some periodicity in the appearance of large numbers of M. cingulata, too little is known of the life history of the New Zealand cicadas to express an opinion on the duration of the life cycle.

by Thomas Ludovic Grant-Taylor, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

• A Revision of the New Zealand Cicadadae (Homoptera) with Descriptions of New Species, Myers, J. G. (Trans. N.Z. Institute (1921), Vol. 53, pp. 238–250)
• Fragments of New Zealand Entomology, Hudson, G. V. (1950)
• Taxonomy, Phyllogeny, and Distribution of New Zealand's Cicadas (Homoptera), Myers, J. G. (Trans. Entomological Soc. of London (1929), Vol. 77, Pt. I, pp. 29–60).

(1816–86).

Regular soldier.

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

Chute was born in County Kerry, Ireland, on 31 July 1816. He entered the Army in 1832, and after serving in the Ceylon Rifles joined the 70th (Surrey) Regiment. After a period in Ireland the regiment was transferred to India, and Chute was at Peshawar when the mutiny broke out. He rescued the British officers there and disbanded the mutinous sepoys. At Lucknow, acting as brigadier-general, Chute formed several flying columns to pacify the country.

Chute came to New Zealand in 1863 with the 70th Regiment, but was then promoted brigadier-general and posted to Australia, where he remained until September 1865. He then succeeded Cameron as Major General Commanding in New Zealand. Chute found that many colonists entertained a bias against regular troops, on the grounds that they refused to undertake the type of bush warfare that the situation demanded. Anxious to remove this stigma he accepted the task that Cameron had refused, namely, to clear the Maoris from the bush lands flanking the planned Taranaki-Wanganui road. With a mixed force of regulars, rangers, and friendly Maoris he left Wanganui on 30 December 1865, stormed Okutuku Pa on 4 January 1866 and Putahi Pa on the seventh. He crossed the Patea River, assaulted Otapawa on 13 January, and then destroyed Ketemarae. Carrying on around Mt. Egmont, Chute reached Mataitawa on 25 January, made a rapid coastal reconnaissance by ship northwards to Awakino, and finally marched his force back from New Plymouth to Wanganui, which was reached on 9 February. In six weeks, for the loss of nine killed and 26 wounded, Chute had marched his men 260 miles, had captured seven fortified pas and had reduced 20 villages. Governor Grey commended him as displaying all the qualities of a great general.

After this expedition Chute became involved in disputes between the Imperial authorities and the colonial Government on the subject of the control of local and regular troops, and of the withdrawal of the British regulars from New Zealand. He refused to concede that the colonial Government could properly exercise separate control of local troops other than through the general officer commanding. He insisted that the regulars be withdrawn according to instructions from England, partly because he believed with Cameron that the motives of the colonists in demanding the continuance of the war were inspired by greed for land.

New Zealand ceased to be a separate military command, and Chute shifted his headquarters to Melbourne, from where he retained control of the regular troops still in the colony. He visited New Zealand in 1869 to make the final arrangements for withdrawing the last regiment, the 18th (Royal Irish), and in August of that year, from Australia, delayed its withdrawal on the representations of the colonial Government that this was essential until the attitude of the Maori king to Te Kooti became known.

In his one military expedition Chute demonstrated that British regulars, when energetically led, could enter the bush and operate without cumbersome military trains, siege impedimenta, and heavy artillery. But at this stage he had little understanding of the Maori problem, and it is likely that he destroyed more cultivations, homes, and cattle than the circumstances warranted. Such impetuosity left problems for scores of years. Chute saw his duty clearly and simply, to obey instructions.

by Ian McLean Wards, M.A., Research Officer, Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Sir George Grey, K.C.B., Rutherford, J. (1961)
• History of New Zealand, Rusden, G. W. (3 vols., 1895)
• The New Zealand Wars, Cowan, J. (2 vols., 1955).

In the educational field, apart from Maori schools and schools in the missionary dioceses of Melanesia and Polynesia, there are 30 colleges and schools associated in varying degrees with and under the general control of the Church. These are secondary, and primary schools for boys and/or girls, in many cases with boarding facilities. The total roll numbers of these schools at the end of 1963 was 7,186. Because few of these schools have endowments, it is a constant problem to maintain their financial stability. As the main source of income is from fees, this often presents problems for parents who desire their children to attend Church schools. Sunday schools, with about 5,290 teachers, provide religious education for 66,000 children and there are 17,100 secondary school children with 970 leaders attending Bible classes.

The largest movement among women is the Mothers' Union, which has about 14,700 members in 429 branches. A development in recent years has been the establishment of Young Wives' Groups. Many parishes have men's groups of various descriptions, including the Church of England Men's Society.

According to Government statistics (1961) there are 835,434 people in New Zealand who claim allegiance to the Church of England. This represents 34.6 per cent of the population. The denominational paper is Church and People, published monthly.

by Laurie Henry Wilson, formerly Secretary and Treasurer of the Church of England in the Province of New Zealand, Christchurch.

• Proceedings of General Synod (1934)
• History of the Church Missionary Society (4 vols.), Stock, E. (1899–1916)
• A History of the Church of England in New Zealand, Purchas, H. T. (1914)
• The History of the Melanesian Mission, Armstrong, E. S. (1900).