OBITUARY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10269, 11 February 1899, Page 8

OBITUARY.

(PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAMS.) NAPIER, February 10. The Rev. W. Colenso, F.R.S., F.L.S., one of New Zealand's earliest settlers, died tills morning at liis residence, aged eighty-eight. He had been ailing for some time, but his death was not expected so soon It was he who introduced to New Zealand the first printing press, which was landed at the Bay of Islands on January 3rd, 1835. He was a devoted student of science, and has been an active contributor to the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute" for the last twenty years.. He leaves three sons to mourn his death.'. . The Rev. W. Colenso, who belonged to an old Cornish family, was born in Penzance in 1811. He was first cousin to the late Bishop of Natal, Dr. John William Colenso, celebrated as a mathematician and Biblical scholar. In his youth he learned the arts of printing and bookbinding and worked in the office of Watts \nd Son, Crown Court, Temple Bar, where he was for a time engaged on work for the British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1833 the Church Missionary Society decided to send out a press and outfit to New Zealand, but had some difficulty in finding a printer to take charge. Mr Colenso was introduced to the secretaries of the Mission, and was definitely engaged. On the 3rd January, 1835, he landed at the Bay of Islands. On opening his boxes, however, New Zealand's pioneer printer found that he had no cases, leads, rules, ink-table, roller stocks, nor frames, iye-brush, nor potash, and, worst of all, no paper! Fortunately, be had provided himself -with a composingstick, the resident missionaries liad a little writing paper among their stores, the expert's ingenuity enabled him to supply other requirementsafter a fashion, and on February 17th, 1835, was worked off in the presence of admiring spectators the first copy of the first book printed in New Zealand—the Epistles to the Ephesians and Pliilippians in the jMaori language. In December, 1837, Mr Colenso printed, amidst many difficulties, the New Testament in Maori. He was 'said to have been the last surviving European wllo was present on the important occasion of tlie signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, on the 6th February, 1840. Mr Colenso took orders in 1884, and settled in Hawke's Bay. In his home at Napier he had a unique collection of natural specimens and curiosities of native art, and a large and valuable library.