WORKS ON NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21325, 28 October 1932, Page 12

WORKS ON NEW ZEALAND

ACQUISITION BY COLLEGE THE BAUMBER COLLECTION RARE AND VALUABLE BOOKS Through (lie generosity of (lie trustees of the Methodist Churches at Pitt Street, Auckland, and Taranaki Street, Wellington, Trinity Methodist College, Auckland, has acquired for its library the very fino collection of between 400 and 500 volumes relating to Now Zealand built up over many years by tlio late He.v. William Baumber. Mr. Baumbcr, who died in Christchurch 011 September 8, aged 79, was an exprosident of the New Zealand Methodist Conference. He arrived in New Zealand in 1877, and during the greater part of a long life he was an assiduous collector of books bearing upon New Zealand history, biography and natural science, and upon Maori anthropology. His Now Zealand library, containing many rare works and first editions, was regarded as one of tlio finest private collections of its kind in New Zealand. The oldest volumes are two upon Cook's first voyage, by Hawkesworth, dated 1773. Other early works nro Labillardierc's "Voyage in Search of La Porouso" (1800), and accounts of visits to Now Zealand by Savago (1807), Nicholas (1817), and Earlo (1827). There is a volume of original copies of Acts of the British Parliament relating to New Zealand, from 1787 to 1852, and a bound collection of all the 11 "Canterbury Papers," published in London by tho promoters of the Canterbury Settlement and dealing with various aspects of tho project. A comparative rarity is a full account of the trial of tho young Edward Gibbon Wakefield on a charge of abducting an heiress, for which he suffered imprisonment. Most of Sir George Grey's published writings aro included in tho collection, together with Wakefield's "Theory of Colonisation," and works by Alfred Domett and William Swainson. On the scientific side are a number of large illustrated folios, including two editions of Bullcr's-"Birds of New Zealand," Kirk's "New Zealand Forest Flora," Hochstctter's "New Zealand," and Hudson's "New Zealand Moths and Butterflies." There are also 55 volumes of tho transactions of tho New Zealand Institute. Among a largo number of works on tho Maoris arc White's "Ancient History of the Maori," complete with tho separate volume of illustrations, Hamilton's "Artworkmanship of tho Maori Race in New Zealand," Major-Gcneral Robley's "Moko" and H. Ling Roth's "The Maori Mantle." There aro also many volumes of biography and imaginative literature and recent works, such as the complete official history of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Great War. The college authorities have decided that the collection shall ho available, on application, to accredited members of tho public for purposes of study.