DIRECTOR OF FORESTRY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 10

DIRECTOR OF FORESTRY.

MR E. PHILLIPS TURNER. (Special to Daily Times.) WELLINGTON, July 2. The appointment of Mr E. Phillips Turner, secretary of the Forestry Department, as Director of Forestry in succession to Mr L. Macintosh Ellis, who resigned recently, was announced to-day by the Commissioner of State Forests (Mr O. J. Hawkeu). Mr Phillips Turner, who is a son of the late Dr Charles Turner, was born in England, and first came to New Zealand as a child with his parents in 1870. As this country was then in a very depressed condition, the family moved to Tasmania, and settled there. He received his education raainiy at the Hutchins School and by private tuition in Tasmania. At the age of 16 years Mr Turner went to sea, but a vear’s experience of that life satisfied him. The year 1882 was spent mainly in private study in England, but towards the end of that year he returned to Tasmania by the Austral, winch was th-i crack steamer of her time. At the end of that voyage the Austral sank in Sydney Harbour. After a period of further M’ivate study and a short experience at firming in Tasmania, Mr Phillips Turner came to New Zealand in 1884. Having always been fond of Nature, and impressed by the call of the wild, he took up surveying and passed his examinations for that profession in 1887. In 1886 he wag an assistant on the survey of the railway line from the Waikato to Rotorua, and the day after the eruption of Tarawera Mountain and Lake Rotomahana he walked from Ngatira to the destroyed Maori village of Wairoa, o n Tarawera Lake. During the next few years Mr Phillips Turner was surveying in different parts of New Zealand and in blew South Wales, and in 1891 he accepted a Government appointment to carry out mining surveys on the west coast silver field of Tasmania. In 1892 he married n daughter of the late Colonel Pine, of Auckland, and afterwards went to England for nearly two years. However, he returned to New Zealand in 1894, and joined the Government Survey Department in Auckland. He was engaged in carrying out various kinds of surveys from Hokianga to Taupo during the eight succeeding years, but after that he was on the office staff in Auckland and Christchurch until 1908, when, because of the interest he had always taken in forestry,, he was appointed to the head office of the Lands Department as inspector of scenic reserves for the Dominion. In this position he travelled all over New Zealand, and became an ardent student of the forests and vegetation of the country. In 1913 he was appointed secretary of the Roval Commission on Forestry, and in the following year he was a member of the Royal Commission on the Reservation of Scenery along the Wanganui River. During the war period Mr Turner was called in from the field and put in charge, under »the Under-secretary- of Lands, of the administrative forestry activities ot the Lands Department. In 1918 forestry was made a distinct branch of the Lands Department, and Mr Phillips Turner was put in charge as chief officer. In 1919 an independent Forestry Department was created, with Mr Turner as head, with the title of secretary of forestry, and in the following year the department was reorganised as'the State Forest service, Mr L. M. Ellis being made director, with Mr Phillips Turner as permanent head in charge of the administrative side as secretary of forestry. Mr Phillips Turner is a Follow of the Royal Geoigraphical Society of England, a member of the Council of the Wellington Philosophical Institute, a member o' the Council of the New Zealand Forestry League, a member of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors, a member of the Tongariro National Park Board, and <i member of the Kapiti Island Advisory Board. He has written a report on the botany of the higher Waimarino and “ An Account of the Eevegetation of Tarawera Mountain,” and has made numerous official reports on forestry and scenery matters.