Colenso’s collections

94 i.e., second to the larger Mangatawhainui, going south from Norsewood.

95 The great forest of Te Tapere Nui o Whatonga stretched from Masterton to Norsewood, and was also known as Forty Mile Bush, or simply “The Bush”.

96 This list was among Hamlin’s Colenso papers. My references are given as footnotes.

97 Actually, the Colenso material is scattered through a number of the 218 bound volumes of correspondence kept at Kew, and copied by the Australian Joint Copying Project in 1971 (microfilm available at the Alexander Turnbull Library); even so, much of it is hard to find, so I have referred below, where possible, to the Kew volume and page numbers, and the microfilm ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel and exposure numbers in the series.

98 The lists are now here reproduced in full in order to help workers interested in Colenso’s specimens at Kew as well as those at WELT. The volumes at Kew contain further letters to JD Hooker and his successor, WT Thistleton-Dyer, and a number of lists of plants described by Colenso in the Transactions – they are also reproduced below.

99 Colenso’s underlining is retained (except, perhaps, in some of the letters which are so indistinct that underlining cannot be discerned); I have not noted errors, and have retained Hamlin’s identifications in 8 pt type where he added them – ie, for entries relating to specimens in Colenso’s herbarium at WELT.

100 I have retained these notes as Colenso wrote them, at least in the letters and plant lists. The descriptions would not constitute formal publication under today’s stricter requirements of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, as there are either no formal Latin descriptions or no types cited.

101 Colenso wrote several letters to JD Hooker in 1865, but the plant list is filed immediately after Colenso’s critique of Hooker’s Handbook, which is also dated 1865.

102 The letter has in fact been kept, and is filed at Kew. There was probably not an accompanying plant list, because Colenso numbered the plants in the margins of the letter, opposite the relevant entries. The letter is dated 1 September 1842, but was sent with that of 1 December 1842, which date Colenso later repeatedly mentioned when referring to those collections. WJ Hooker published the letter in full, unedited. One letter does, however, appear to be missing – that of March 1843 quoted by Colenso under plant no. 104 in his letter of 20 May 1844.

103 ATL reference no. 90-253.

104 A 90-ton schooner that plied the Tasman in the 1830-40s. The first generation of Australian-borns of settler parentage were called currency lads or lasses, as distinct from “sterlings”, born in Britain.

105 Cunningham sent him a description (with drawings) of the NZ orchids.

106 Cacoethes scribendi: the irresistible urge to write: Colenso knew it well – as did Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote

If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

107 ATL reference no. 90-253.

108 Cape Reinga, whence the souls of the dead depart for the afterlife.

109 ATL Ms papers 5806.

110 Heward gave manuscript names, so clearly intended to publish descriptions of some of the plants Colenso sent to Cunningham, but as far as I can ascertain, only Hooker did so. Heward presented Allan Cunningham’s NZ Herbarium to Kew in 1862 .

111 ATL reference no. 90-253.

112 ATL reference no. 88-103-1/14

113 i.e., New South Wales

114 Cunningham had recurrent hepatitis and tuberculosis; he was already ill when he arrived in the Bay of Islands; there are almost no records of his time with Colenso, though the latter did mention to Hooker “the dense Kaitaia forest where he caught his ‘death-cold’, and Hooker wrote in the introduction to the Handbook, “...Allan, whose arduous exertionsin the (NZ) islands led to his untimely death.” Bagnall & Petersen mention, enigmatically, “a constitutional dysentery, a relic of his benightment in the Kaitaia bush.” With his chronic illnesses, any hardship he had to endure in Northland might have hastened his death.

115 King wrote to Colenso on 9 March that he would write to WJ Hooker, but by then Colenso had also written (Feb. 1840).

116 Cunningham described the N.Z. plants he collected in 1826 before he met Colenso. The descriptions were published in 1836-9 (Cunningham A. Florae Insularum Novae Zelandiae Precursor: or a specimen of the Botany of the Islands of New Zealand. Published serially in Companion to the Botanical Magazine 2: p367, and Annals of Natural History vol 1-4). Cunningham died before he could describe any of the plants Colenso sent him after his second visit to N.Z. in 1838.

117 He did, much later (July 1844) send a collection to England with James Busby and in later letters referred to these plants as “sent pr. Mr. Busby”.

118 Perhaps RK Greville 1830: Algæ Brittanicæ.

119 Kew Directors’ Correspondence (DC) Vol LXXIII: p. 44; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E335.

120 Heward intended to publish some of them (see footnote 110 above), but I can find no evidence that he did.

121 Kew Colenso’s Mss Botany of New Zealand p.1ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E461.

122 If it be objected, that the Insect is not likely to do so from that Tree affording no supply of food to its Larvae, (though, at present, I am not disposed to concede so much) we might relinquish the term “deposits,” and say “drops some of”. Still, whichever word we use, the fact is the same; for the Larvae on which the Sphaeria is found, is generally observed to have fully attained to its natural size. It would be highly interesting and well worth observation, to mark the various stages in the growth of the Sphaeria, and, also, to ascertain the manner in which the Larva, after falling from the Tree, gets imbedded so deeply in the soil.

123 Kew JDH/2/10 Joseph Hooker Correspondence 1839-45: p17-21; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 27, E265. JD Hooker arrived in the Bay of Islands on HMS Erebus on 16 August 1841 and sailed on 23 November. Colenso was away till 19 August, and 17 September to 12 October, and then embarked on his “Journey” on 19 November. The Kew volumes contain five undated notes from Colenso to Hooker, so their order can only be guessed (though the last must have been written on Thursday 18 November). Hooker’s letters to his father relate the excursions to Kerikeri river on Thursday 26 August, and Waikare Inlet on Thursday 2 September.

124 by WJ Hooker and F Bauer.

125 Andrew Sinclair arrived from Sydney on the “Favorite” on 24 October (Bagnall & Petersen p86).

126 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p. 45. ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E337.

127 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXVI: p. 1 Already published; Reel 6: E377-E413. Published in the London Journal of Botany 1844; III: 1-62 (with WJ Hooker’s introduction). Referred to as the “Journal” or the “Journey” by Colenso.

128 Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. 2, p. 230.

129 See Tabs. DCXXX, DCXXXI, DCXXXIX, DCLII and DCLXXIII of that work.

130 As a specimen of the services rendered to the cause of Christianity, I may observe, that there are now lying before me, admirably bound copies of the New Zealand Testament and the Prayer Book, each of them bearing the inscription, “At a time when no mechanic was to be found here (New Zealand) this book was composed and finished, binding included, by the writer, W. Colenso, Superintendent of C. M. S Printing department in New Zealand, 1842”.

131 See vol. 4, p. 312, of the Annals of Natural History, for an account of this bird, by Mr. Allan Cunningham.

132 Lemna – Ed.

133 Decidedly so – Ed.

134 Since penning the above I am happy in being enabled to add, that I have obtained fine living specimens of this plant, which have flowered since they came into my possession. Its corolla is monopetalous, labiate, and quinquefid with didynamous stamens, and superior unilocular ovary. It may probably rank in the Order Cyrtandraccæ;. W.C. (This proves to be the rare Ourisia macrophylla. Hook Ic. Pl. tabs. DXLV, VI – Ed.)

135 After quoting Longfellow in the introduction to “In Memoriam”, Colenso confessed that he “always took a poet” with him on his journeys (in this case the rather turgid James Thomson 1700-1748: “Summer noon”) .

136 James Thomson again.

137 I am inclined to believe that it was a similar bird to the specimen herewith sent for the Museum of the Linnæan Society.

138 I will just mention the direction of the river for the first ten miles, us I took it down from observation with my compass: Those bearings without distances annexed I supposed to be under half a mile

N.E.

N.

N.W. , 1 mile.

S.S.E.

S.

S.S.W.

S. , ½ mile.

S.S.W.

W.

W.N.W. , ½ mile.

W.S.W.

W. , 1½ mile.

W.N.W.

N.W.

N.

N.N.E. , ½ mile.

N.

139 The footnote appears in the letter, but not in the publication.

140 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p. 46; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E342.

141 This is the collection detailed in the 1 September 1842 “Journal”.

142 I cannot find a letter dated September 1841.

143Lady Jane Franklin visited Colenso at the Bay of Islands, and later sent him a microscope: “I hope the accompanying botanic microscope of which I beg your kind acceptance may be of use to you in your researches if you have not one already, and I assure you that I shall feel exceedingly happy if you will give me in any way an opportunity of being useful to you – As our colony has the advantage of yours in age (for I will not imitate the prevailing Australasian trick of self-puffing by making any higher boast) it may perhaps be in our power to furnish you with some things which in your youthful state are not to be found in New Zealand”.

144 Colenso was therefore short-sighted.

145 Yellow basilicon ointment contained yellow wax, obtained from honeycomb.

146 Kew Botany of New Zealand p10ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E472

147 The Tortoise served at St. Helena in 1817 during Napoleon’s exile. She departed Plymouth on 26 October 1841 with 394 male prisoners and on 19 February 1842 arrived in Hobart Town. On 16 March she departed Hobart for the Bay of Islands, arriving at Kororareka on the 21st. Between then and 19 June her crew gathered 103 Kauri masts along the Coromandel Coast for the Admiralty. Sailor’s Grave at Tairua was named for a sailor from the Tortoise who drowned in the surf in 1842. She sailed for home in June 1843, and was eventually broken up in 1859.

148 Kew JDH/2/1/4 Letters to Joseph Hooker, Vol IV: p116; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 27: E436

149 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p. 47; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E348.

150 Cicero: “Oh the times! Oh the morals!”

151 Perhaps not – this letter is referred to above (footnote 142), but is missing from the Kew files.

152 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E348.

153 Juvenal: Amor nummi crescit quantum ipsa pecunia crescit: The love of a coin grows as money itself grows.

154 Kew JDH/2/1/4 Letters to Joseph Hooker, Vol IV: p118; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 27: E438.

155 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p. 48; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E349. Colenso later referred repeatedly to this collection as “Lot pr. Mr. Busby”.

156 Kew Plant Determination List (PDL) XXVIII: p35ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 35: E659.

157 Panoko, Cheimarrichthys forsteri. Syns. Panonoko, Panokonoko, Papanoko, Panokoreia, Parikou, Papane, Panepane, Parikoi, and Papangoko.

158 This passage is not in the March 1844 letters – but perhaps it was the fern, not the memo, he sent; I cannot find a March 1843 letter.

159 Kew Plant Determination Lists (PDL) XXVIII: p46; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 35: E671.

160 [i.e. Richard Cunningham, amended from “A.C.”]

161 An astringent used in Ayurvedic medicine.

162 Cinchona alkaloids include quinine.

163 Kew Botany of New Zealand: p16; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E478.

164 The Barque “Bolina” was registered in London, but spent her latter years plying the Tasman with passengers and livestock, until she was bought by Logan Campbell in 1844 and used to export timber and ore to Britain.

165 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p49; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E351.

166 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p50; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E354.

167 The “Ralph Bernal” was a 341-ton barque, registered in London. Ralph Bernal was a liberal politician and art connoisseur.

168 Otium cum dignitate: leisure with dignity.

169 Hooker did not do so, so we too have retained Colenso’s original numbering.

170 Kew Colenso’s Botany of New Zealand Mss: p20ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E482.

171 There is no 176, and there are two 183s.

172 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p51; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E357.

173 Kew Botany of New Zealand: p42ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E504.

174 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXIII: p51; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E357.

175 Kew Botany of New Zealand p50; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E512.

176 Colenso inadvertently repeated nos 907-921, and in his 21 January 1848 letter, suggested this series should be 907β, 908β et seq.

177 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p52; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E360.

178 These are Nos. 661-921 referred to in letters dated 6 August to 20 December 1846.

179 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p53; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E361.

180 I am not what I once was.

181 Kew Botany of New Zealand: p51ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E513.

182 “Eureka!”

183 In fact this a simply a rewording of the list in that letter.

184 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E363.

185 [Ardea = heron; Halcyon = kingfisher; Podiceps = crested grebe].

186 Kew Botany of New Zealand: p67ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E529.

187 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIV: p38; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 4: E324.

188 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIII: p42; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 3: E328.

189 The “Lord William Bentinck” was built of wood in 1828 at Yarmouth England. Its hull was sheathed in metal in 1833. She took convicts to Australia and later settlers to NZ after 1841. Lord William Bentinck was Governor of India.

190 Kew Botany of New Zealand: p86ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E548.

191 Ethnobotany in the cause of taxonomy: “Colenso was one of the few European botanists who took any interest in indigenous knowledge; the uses to which ‘the locals’ put plants was seen as a sufficient basis for a species name in his eyes.” (Endersby J 2001. “From having no Herbarium”. Local knowledge vs. metropolitan expertise: Joseph Hooker’s Australasian correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn. Pacific Science, 55 (4). pp. 343-358).

192 Eureka (alternative spelling).

193 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIV; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 4: E325.

194 A giant water lily.

195 Kew Botany of New Zealand p126ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E587.

196 Colenso’s own marriage was in trouble: his illegitimate child had been born, and on 5 February (two days after he wrote this) his mistress Ripeka and his servant Hamuera, ran away with the child.

197 Kew Directors’ Correspondence LXXIV; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 4: E329.

198 Colenso may have referred here to the publications Hooker sent him – but (although he never mentions it – in fact says repeatedly that he collected for Kew “con amore”) he may have been paid for sending specimens: JD Hooker wrote to Captain Ross (7 September 1847), “Mr. Gunn and Colenso are still employed in making collections in all parts of these islands and are paid by my Father and self for doing so, from our own pockets”.

199 JD Hooker’s unkind comments came at just the wrong time for the beleaguered Colenso. The relationship between Hooker’s and Colenso’s knowledge (and thus the power differential in their relationship) is sensitively explored in Endersby J. 2001. “From having a herbarium.” Local Knowledge and Metropolitan Expertise: Joseph Hooker’s Australasian Correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn. Pacific Science vol. 55, no. 4: 343-358.

200 Kew:W. Colenso – Botany of New Zealand: Vol. I, p129ff; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 23: E590.

201 Kew Directors’ Correspondence CLXXIV: p107; ATL Micro-Ms-Coll-10 Reel 15: E422.

202 vice: “I conquered”

203 How could a spike contain flowers of 3 distinct genera, Catasetum tridentatum, Monachanthus viridis and Myanthus barbatus? Darwin showed that Catasetum was the male, Monachanthus the female, and Myanthus the hermaphrodite, of the same species (1862;Linnæan Proceedings – Botany: Vol.vi).

204 JB Hombron and H Jacquinot, d’Urville’s naturalists.

205