Obituary. William Townson, 1850–1926.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 58, 1928, Page 186

Obituary. William Townson, 1850–1926. William Townson was born at Liverpool, England, in 1850, came to New Zealand as a young man, and died at the Thames on 11th August, 1926. Townson was at first educated with a view to qualifiying for medicine, his father, Dr. Benjamin Townson, being a Liverpool medical man; but he chose to become a pharmaceutical chemist, a business he carried on for nearly forty years in various parts of New Zealand. William Townson. 1850-1926 Moving from one town to another, he had opportunity to study the plants of widely separated districts. Townson made collections on the Tararua Range (Mt. Holdsworth), the volcanoes, Mounts Ruapehu and Egmont, and from the mountains near his last home at Thames.

The North Island had been well examined by other collectors, so that Townson's chief work must be accounted that carried out in the South Island. Townson thus acquired an excellent knowledge of the flowering plants and ferns over a very large part of New Zealand. His one paper to the Transactions was that on the vegetation of the Westport district, with a list of plants. Concerning his work, Cheeseman (Manual of the New Zealand Flora, p. xxxiv) says:— “During the last five years, Mr. W. Townson, of Westport, has diligently explored the greater portion of south-western Nelson, from the Mokihinui River southwards to the Grey River, repeatedly ascending all the higher peaks of the coast ranges, as Mount Frederic, Mount Rochfort, Mount William, Mount Faraday, Mount Buckland, etc. He has also visited the Lyell Mountains, and many of the high peaks flanking the Buller Valley, as far up the river as Mount Murchison and Mount Owen. Most of this large district had never been carefully examined for plants, and Mr. Townson has conse-quently reaped a rich harvest of novelties, most of which are described in this work. Among them are Aciphylla Townsoni, Cel-misia dubia, Dracophyllum Townsoni, and D. pubescens, Gentiana Townsoni, Veronica divergens and V. coarctata, and the interesting new genus of Orchideae, which I have named in his honour Town-sonia. Mr. Townson's specimens, which have been collected with great care and judgment, have been mainly forwarded to me for the purpose of this work, and have proved of much service in deter-mining many questions relating to the geographical range of the species.” Townson's work in Westland was no doubt of great value to Cheeseman when preparing his work on the systematic botany of New Zealand. Townson's observtions, especially those dealing with the altitudinal range of species, are valuable, but would have been of much more assistance to students of ecology, had he given some indication of the relative abundance of the commoner plants in the different types of country he so often traversed, including the pakihi, a type characteristic only of the Nelson and Westland area, the salt mud-flats, the forests, the scrubs, and the mountain tops. These all yielded merely their rarities to him, though now and then he gives a complete list of plants of some definite association. Townson was of a modest. gentle disposition, but full of energy and enthusiasm. He had many sides to his character, and lived a full life, cultivating many branches of knowledge, helping in every good work, a friend to all who sought to learn the secrets of nature, a lover of music, good literature, and gardening. He was a student of Maori customs and traditions, and a keen collector of specimens of Maori workmanship. He had a good knowledge of the birds of New Zealand, and communciated notes on that subject to the press. He was no mean chess player for he held the championship cup of the Thames Club.

Townson was no recluse. After a week spent in attempts to alleviate human suffering, it was his joy to visit the mountains, but he also found time to be an active church worker and to meet others in furtherance of some design for the common good, for culture, or for relaxation. The Rev. James Milne, M. A., in a tribute to his memory in the Thames Star says:— “Townson, without doubt, found reward in the work itself. He loved to roam over his beloved hills and mountains, his face aglow with ruddy health, his eyes shining with zeal for something new, or higher heights to climb.” In his youth he suffered from chest complaint, but he struggled manfully, and how well he ultimately succeeded in outgrowing his weakness one may read between the lines in his Westport travels:—(Transactions of New Zealand Institute, Vol. 39, p. 380.) “I have never regretted consenting to prepare this list, although I had no conception that it would prove to be such a big undertaking, for thousands of miles had to be walked, over hill country and plain, in fair weather and foul, and numerous difficulties had to be sur-mounted. But in looking back upon these years of wandering, when all my senses were on the alert, and my thews and sinews were strung to stand the strain of the longest day's tramp, when the book of nature was no more a sealed book for me, and the trees, plants, and birds became my familiar friends, they were undoubtedly the happiest years of my life.” Well, indeed, might he have cried with the psalmist, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” B. C. Aston.