Walter Baldock Durrant Mantell

Walter Baldock Durrant Mantell

Perceiving the trail of a large and unknown bird on the snow with which the ground was covered, they followed the footprints until they obtained sight of the Notornis, which their dogs instantly pursued, and after a long chase caught alive in a gully of a sound behind Resolution Island. It ran with great speed, and upon being captured uttered loud screams, and fought and struggled violently; it was kept alive three or four days on board the schooner and then killed and the body roasted and eaten by the crew, each partaking of dainty which was declared delicious …

Walter Mantell’s father, Gideon Mantell, describes Walter Mantell’s discovery of the takahē to a meeting of the Zoological Society in London. www.nzbirds.com/birds/takahe.html

Despite the attempts of his father, the respected English doctor, palaeontologist and geologist Gideon Mantell (his Iguanodon tooth – the world’s first dinosaur fossil – is now held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) to train his son as a doctor, Walter Mantell failed to complete his studies. Instead, at the age of 19, he left England to sail to the New Zealand Company settlement of Wellington, where he arrived in 1840. After working as a farmer, clerk and postmaster, he eventually settled into a job with the office of commissioner for extinguishing native titles, in which he was responsible for setting aside native reserves and later for land purchases. In 1861, he was elected to the House of Representatives as the member for Wallace.

Throughout his time in New Zealand, Mantell indulged his interest in natural history, with his father’s scientific colleagues taking advantage of Mantell’s location in the new colony. Mantell provided geologist Charles Lyell with information about earthquakes, and corresponded with Charles Darwin about glaciers and reptiles. Mantell was most closely associated, however, with Richard Owen, of the natural history department of the British Museum. Like other  natural history enthusiasts in New Zealand, Mantell took on the role of collector, sending all his specimens to England for identification, scientific description and display. Having been alerted by his father to Owen’s interest in moa fossils, Mantell sent Owen numerous crates containing hundreds of moa bones and egg shells. Owen was greatly impressed, writing extensively on the moa and using the bones to construct a Dinornis elephantopus, the largest moa so far recovered.

As well as collecting moa bones, Mantell found fossilised bones of a new genus of bird, which was subsequently named Notornis mantelli. In 1849, Mantell captured live specimens of the takahē, a closely-related species that was named Notornis hochstetteri. He sent takahē skins to his father, who presented them to the Zoological Society in London, along with the story of the capture and killing of the ‘delicious’ bird.

Mantell lived most of his adult life in Wellington, where he was active in the Wellington Philosophical Society and the New Zealand Institute, and during James Hector’s absences, filled in as acting director of the Geological Survey and Colonial Museum.

By Rebecca Priestley

Further reading

Walter Baldock Durrant Mantell biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Mantell's article 'On Moa Beds', published in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1872, is available online:

Article by Walter Mantell – Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand website

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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