Early explorers and collectors

The late 18th and 19th centuries were a time of European exploration and scientific discovery. Gentlemen naturalists, many of them wealthy amateurs or sponsored by wealthy patrons, travelled south from Europe in search of exotic biological specimens to grace the emerging natural history museums of Europe – and the drawing rooms of private collectors. 

Botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, who sailed with Captain James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific, were the first European scientists to visit New Zealand. They were followed by other naturalists on European voyages of discovery – the Forsters on Cook’s second voyage, the French naturalists on Duperrey and d’Urville’s voyages to the South Pacific and other scientific parties from France, Britain, Austria and Germany. Using Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus’s new classification system, the naturalists catalogued the exotic flora and fauna, also noting which species of birds and fish made good eating and which plants were good for food, pasture and timber.

Other scientists, such as Julius Haast and Ferdinand Hochstetter, arrived to explore the country’s geology – not just to add to  the sum of scientific knowledge but to assess the country for European settlement and exploitable resources such as coal, gold and silver. 

As Europeans began to settle in New Zealand, resident scientists and collectors gathered specimens – of plants, birds, shells, insects and fossils – to send to scientists and museums in England and Western Europe. By 1865, New Zealand had its own national museum and specimens were being collected to fill its cabinets and shelves.

The country’s scientific societies, incorporated as the New Zealand Institute in 1867, provided a forum for scientific discussion and debate, with the institute’s journal, the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, publishing regular papers on botany, zoology, geology and other scientific disciplines of interest to members.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1868-1961 online

The material in this online exhibition was originally developed for the National Library Gallery exhibition 'Butterflies, Boffins & Black Smokers: Two Centuries of Science in New Zealand', curated by Veronika Meduna and Rebecca Priestly in 2006.