MUSEUM TRUST BOARD

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26662, 22 February 1952, Page 8

MUSEUM TRUST BOARD

DIRECTOR REPORTS ON NOTORNIS COLONY

‘MORE ENCOURAGING HOPE

FOR SURVIVAL’

Last December’s expedition to Notornis valley, Te Anau, had supported earlier observations that the notornis colony was more widespread than at first believed, said Dr. Roger Duff, director of the Canterbury Museum, in his report to a meeting of the Canterbury Museum Trust Board yesterday. Departmental officers now had records of about 40 adult birds in the headwaters of the main streams between the south and middle arms of Lake Te Anau. Discoveries the expedition had made confirmed that the birds regularly nested in tussock basins above the forest line, at altitudes of between 4000 and 5000 feet, and this greatly extended the area of their habitat, and offered a more encouraging hope for their survival. Further excavations in the Maori shelters in the valley suggested that the megalapteryx moa (the name means “big kiwi”), whose feathers and bones had been previously found there, had been killed before the arrival of Europeans, more than 170 years ago, continued Dr. Duff. This made less certain the hopes for the survival of this small moa, but until the whole of the Fiordland mountains had been properly explored hopes would continue, he said.

Active preparations for the loan exhibition of Oriental art were well under way, said Dr. Duff in his report. The exhibition, which will open in the Durham Street Art Gallery on Monday, April 21, is being conducted under the auspices of the museum and will serve as a preview of the type of loan exhibition which will be possible in the Centennial Museum. Additions to Collections Additions to museum collections were acknowledged in the director’s report. They included the carved door lintel of a Maori meeting, house, which was allocated to the museum from the W. O. Oldman collection purchased by the New Zealand Government; and a valuable collection of relics of the Morioris of the Chatham Islands, presented by Mr Geoffrey Neville, who until recently was Resident Commissioner in the islands.

The campaign to build up the Centennial Memorial Museum Fund had not yet begun, as an organiser had still to be appointed, said the director, but he acknowledged unsolicited gifts of £lO from the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand. Institute of Electricians; £2 from Miss M. McLachlan; £l5 10s 9d from Mrs A. L. Barker; and £5O from a Canterbury family. The last-named are descendants of immigrants who arrived by the William Hyde on February 5, 1852, and in deciding to celebrate the centenary of their arrival by their gift, they exgressed the hope that other Canterury families would follow their example. Good progress had been made in the work of the library during the last two months, said the librarian of the museum (Mr J. C. Wilson). Important additions had been made to the library and the archives. Steady progress had also been achieved in the less spectacular work of cataloguing and arranging the collections.