ROUGH SOWING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 117, 20 May 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

ROUGH SOWING.

OUR PIONEER PROFESSORS

HARD WORK AND HARVEST.

(By CYRANO.)

Wherefore praise we famous men From whone.bays wc borrow — They that put aside To-day— All the joys of their To-day— And with toil of their To-day Bought for us To morrow !

The word pioneer makes one think of settlers in. the wilderness—of tents and sod wliares, corrugated iron shacks and isolation, log paddocks and bullock drays. Our infant literature is full of praise of this kind of pioneer. He is, however, not the only kind, and I would like this week to say a word for another, whose devoted services have been in danger of being overlooked —the whole class of teachers who left an ordered and comfortable life, with prospects of advancement and fame, in Britain, and set to work in this new country to plough the fields and scatter the seed of knowledge. But for many of these men and women ploughing the fields is not a suitable figure of speech. Bather was their work like sowing one of our bush burns, which "M.E.S." described graphically in tlicse columns the other day. You burn the bush and then sow, from a bag 011 your back, grass seed among the logs. Their labours against odds and their sacrifices are typified in the work of our early University professors, and we are reminded of these now by two celebrations—the recent diamond jubilee of Canterbury College and the golden jubilee of Auckland University College, the celebrations of which begin tomorrow.

Building the Foundations. The Auckland example is particularly interesting, because there can liave been few University institutions in any part of the world that started in such unpromising and indeed depressing circumstances, and with such inadequate equipment. The environment was less favourable than in Christeliurch or Dunedin, for Auckland was denied the ordered, organised and peaceful development enjoyed by the Southern cities, where, from the first, culture was part of the scheme of life. That, however, by 110 means entirely accounted for the extraordinary situation that awaited the first professors when they arrived fifty years ago. The establishment of a University college had been recommended by a commission in 1879, and that a beginning was not made until 1883 was much more (he fault of Parliament than of Auckland. When the staff arrived, tliev found they were required to lecture in a block of buildings consisting of a dirty,

dishevelled, wooden room, with lean-to's attached. There was no equipment. The college came as hear as possible to the basic requirements of an academy as set forth by a famous American — a teacher sitting on a log. This was bad enough for classics and English, but it was much worse for science. There was no apparatus, and very few chemicals could be obtained locally. The furniture consisted of a chair and a safe. All this, bear in mind, was in the middle of a depression nearly if not quite as serious as the present.

We may picture the feelings of the staff, fresh from great universities of the Old World. But they took off tlieir coats and waded in. On the science side, they had to be their own carpenters, blacksmiths, electricians, plumbers — handy men of every kind. Shops were ransacked for apparatus and material, and all sorts of makeshifts were devised. Of that original staff, two professors, F. D. Brown and A. P. W. Thomas, stayed until they retired in middle age. Professor Aldis, senior wrangler and Smith's Prizeman, left after eleven years and tho circumstances of his leaving are remembered in Cambridge to the detriment of New Zealand University institutions to this flay. How that early staff must have worked! Professor Brown took two subjects, chemistry and physics, with one assistant, Mr. A. H. Bowell, who came out from England with him as a youth and is still 011 tho staff of the college. Professor Thomas was for years responsible for biology, zoology, botany and geology, and his staff consisted of ohe assistant in his laboratory. "Many a time," says Mr. Bowell, "I left the college at midnight and saw a professor's light still in." Sometimes Mr. Bowell worked from breakfast until eight or nine at night with 110 meals—there simply was not time to eat. Of course, there were only a few students compared with the hundreds to-day, but the full courses for B.A. and honours had to be covered, and there is ample proof of the high quality of the professors' work.

Freely Given Services. These men, however, were not content with doing a]) thus, college work with so small a staff—and remember that these staff conditions lasted for years — but they gave freely of their services to the public outside. Their popular lectures, often requiring much preparatory work, spread knowledge in a community that had little time or opportunity for such things. Lectures in elementary science at the college were arranged for school teachers. The professors did not stand upon their dignity in this respect and require a certain standard in their students; tliev realised that conditions were exceptional and took learning to the ignorant. His students will remember Professor Thomas' energy and enthusiasm for his various subjects—his excursions with students, his visit to a

lonely rock in the Bay of Plenty to study the tuatara, his travels over New Zealand in search of botanical and geo-logical-information. He found time, too, to make in his Mount Eden home one of the most beautiful gardens in the country, a place noted especially for its daffodils, and he was able to do some original wor]c. Then, as. now, I suppose, outsiders envied professors their long vacations. They needed them. In its first years Auckland appears to have been an extreme example of university work carried out under difficulties, but difficulties of small staffs and inadequate housing and equipment must be encountered at first in most overseas universities. Professors who came to New Zealand when our university institutions were in their infancy were asked to carry a burden never thought of in older lands, and New Zealand was fortunate in having men in these positions who could deal with a variety of subjects. Professor Thomas and Professor Brown added to their duties in science by lecturing for a while 011 mathematics.. Two other early professors combined classics and English. Within recent years an early product of Canterbury College held three chairs at once in another college, without one assistant. When one thinks of the early days, the name of Macmillan Brown quickly comes to mind. How wide was his knowledge, how keen his enthusiasm, and how prodigious his power of work I He has promised us his reminiscences, and one hopes he will have a good deal to say about the pioneering lives of professors in New Zealand, set to do tasks that would have amazed and horrified somo of the occupants of comfortable chairs in England. Even to-day the 6cale of staffing is less liberal than in English universities.

Sacrificing Fame. Sorno day a novelist will take (hose early university days of ours for a subject. He will describe the losses that such men suffered 011 coming to this new and remote community— tho lack of intellectual companionship and the stimulus of the competition that is to be found in the larger world, the absence of a traditional- culture, and the extreme difficulty of doing original work. To gifted young scientists this difficulty pressed with particular force. They left England at a time when innumerable avenues of research were opening out to scientists, and in a country at the very end of the world they were well-nigh overwhelmed with teaching routine. There were, however, Compensations. The subject is admirably discussed in one of W. P. Reeves' bestknown poems—the position of a cultured man in "a land without a past; a race set in the rut of commonplace." Invited to return to England, he answers that he prefers to stay where he has fought Nature for a home. Now. when the fight is o'er, what man. WIIIII wi'i'stlcr. who in manhood's span Until win .•-■<) ftprn a fall. Who, matched against ihu docert's power, Hath made the wilderness to flower, Can turn, forsaking all ?

This was the consolation of tlie professor. He was a nation builder. Looking back on his life he might regret that he had left the comfort and culture of England and the chance of winning fame as a discoverer or an author. But someone might assure him —if lie did not assure himself—that lie had done well in bringing knowledge and love of learning to a country preoccupied with, the business of making a home —that he was a pioneer 110 less than the men who hewed the forest and followed the plough. To my knowledge, one such dialogue has been spoken in New Zealand, and I do not suppose It stands alone. Yes, we should remember these early light-bearers. The years pass and tlieir memory grows dim. Forty-three years were to go by before the Auckland University College found a worthy home —though, of course, it soon outgrew the room and lean-to stage —yet those days of the old, dingy wooden buildings in a side street are already distant to the younger generation. " The Old Clay Patch " in Wellington is, I suppose, also a legend. Let students in their far more comfortable , situation turn back periodically and honour the labour of those academic pioneers, which "broad and deep continueth, great beyond their knowing."