LATE DR. COCKAYNE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21907, 17 September 1934, Page 10

LATE DR. COCKAYNE

RECOGNITION OF WORK OVERSEAS APPRECIATION [BY TF.LEG&APH —PBESS ASSOCIATION] WELLINGTON. Sunday The Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, has received a letter from Sir Arthur Hill, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, paying a tribute to the late Dr. Leonard Cockayne. Sir Arthur states that Dr. Cockayne occupied a very distinguished place in the estimation of botanical colleagues all over the world on account of his signal services to botany in New Zealand. He h*d developed new and original lines of work of great scientific interest and importance and had also created and stimulated a vigorous band of research workers, who would carry on the. work he had initiated. His work relating to the prevalence of natural hybrids in New 'Zealand flora had been a revelation .to botanists and naturalists and had brought tho Dominion into the scientific world as a botanical region of unexpected importance.

No better memorial could be devised than the Otari Open-air Museum at Wellington. Sir Arthur expressed the hope that its maintenance would be regarded as a perpetual obligation by the Government as an abiding memorial to Dr. Cockayne and his work. "He was a true naturalist and a great lover of the country of his adoption, to which he gave *of his best," Sir Arthur stated. ''His spirit of enterprise and enthusiasm in a great cause happily lives on in a devoted band of fellow-labourers, drawn from many different walks of life, who have so kindly entered into his labours."