A.U.C.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 114, 17 May 1933, Page 9

A.U.C.

THE FIRST YEARS. DIFFICULTIES OF TEACHING. BUILDING FOUNDATIONS. (No. III.) "Not unworthily the vineyard of the Lord" and "the place of heaven," long ago Wycliff wrote of the university town of Oxford. Venerable then, the old town, be-spired and rich with colleges, has received the passing of many, many years as a gift of great price. Thus its tradition and its stone facades have mellowed together, so that they are scarcely spoken of apart, like a proud name and the one who bears it. It was from that atmosphere of high culture, from that town of glorious English trees and stately mellow buildings that Professor A. P. W. Thomas and Mr. A. H. Bowell arrived in Auckland on May 1, 1883, two of the staff of the new Auckland College of another, newer University to be opened in a dank, muety, dishevelled, cobwebby room, overlooking the mudflats of Mechancs' Bay, over which, when the tide was low, an open sewer wound its way between sailing vessels lying on their sides in the slime. Almost it was from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Both men are in Auckland to-day, the former, carrying on in his retirement a great work for education apart from the University; the latter now acting head of the department of chemistry, having seen continuous teaching service in the college since the day it was opened.

Popularising University. Of the circumstances which led Professor Thomas, as head of the departments of biology and geology, to accept a position in New Zealand much might be said; but the point of immediate importance is that he did accept—a professor at the age of 25. "And," he eaid "what was our welcome? Professor Brown —another of the original staff— and I had eeen the home of the uni,j?ec&Us, We then, get out to iiad pax.

colleagues, Professors Tucker and Walker, in Ponsonby. When the door was opened to us, the maid cried to us, 'Oh! sirs, Professor Walker is drowned, and Professor Tucker ie ill in bed.' That was our introduction to the New Zealand University."

After the professor had spoken for a time, he was asked how he .spent his leisure time. Quite seriously, without wishing to be impressive, he replied, "There was no leisure time," Then he explained. The small staff had to build as they went, for they had started with practically nothing. On leaving London, lie had been told by Sir Franeis Dillon Bell that he would have to popularise the college, and that he set about to do. It was not easy, for the idea of a University had not permeated in Auckland. Actually there was a'section which conBidered the college a gross extravagance.

History of Scientific Agriculture. Especially was he interested in scientific agriculture. In 1888 he addressed a memorandum to the University Senate that it was the duty of a university to train teachers in agricultural science and to institute such a degree in the university. It was due to his efforts that the degree for the Bachelor of Agricultural Science was instituted. He used to tour the province talking to farmers. He used to take students into the Waitakeree for the week-end, round the harbour for the week-end on geological, biological and botanical expeditions. He reported on the Tarawera eruption for the Government; a hundred and one other events filled in his time. During those first years he had to collect a museum, he had to make bricks without straw, to buy without money, to lecture without equipment. And he, and the others, accomplished it. In those years hLi class never fell below 12, and was generally nearer 20.

"They were happy days," he said, sitting in a chair in his drawing room, gazing down the years, across a slowly darkening room. "They were happy days, but the work wae trying." Hβ resigned his post after 31 sessions.

Perhaps more of the spade work fell to the lot of Mr. Bowell, since he came out not as a professor, but as assistant in the department of chemistry under Professor F. D. Brown.. "I had to be farrier, carpenter, electrician, mechanician, brick-layer, cleaner, these without exaggeration, jack of all trades, master of Done,". Q£ m &*<* ft? PB<*e SSSH

without bitterness. "There was not a stick of furniture," lie said. "There was just a bare room, with paper hanging from the walls, with cobwebs, trailing dismally across the windows. It looked uninhabitable.

No Apparatus Available. "One of the first lectures ever given was one by Professor Brown in chemistry. No apparatus was available; no chemicals were in the. place except what we could scratch up from the- town. Wβ made use of meat tins for pneumatic troughs and whatever etee could possibly be made do. All .we had by way of illumination was the old batswing gas burner. A pipe came down from the roof with a ring on the end of it. The burners were set round that ring. The light was so bad that we could not see to do experiments. In desperation, in 1888 I put up a series of secondary batteries, with dynamos and accumulators complete. We were so poor that we could not have the foundations built, so I built them my%elf.

"My office was in the basement, as a matter of fact in the old lock-up of the Courthouse. My furniture consisted of a gas meter, a gas engine and rat holes.. For warmth, I used to place a sheet of iron over the gas jet and hope for the best. They used to have the chemicals stored in the too. It was so damp there that the labels would not stay on th# bottles more than a week, so I had to paint them on. Even then often we had to analyse our etoras to find what was there.

"Many a time and oft I have made a pilgrimage into the city to buy chemicals. Much of what I asked for the local storekeepers had never heard. T was the laughing-stock of the "town. An old man named Smart in T. S. Motrin's store used to say to me before I opened my mouth, 'No, we haven't got it.' " "With Professor Tbomas, he said that there was no leisure time. "We went from daylight to dark, every day. of tho week," lie said. "Sundays included, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen hours a. day were nothing. We had everything to . :10. The professor used to do a tremenclou., amount of work outside the college IcetUMr'"Bowell finished turning 5.0 pages of rears hy saying how fortunate New