“The Little Stonebreaker.”

In 1863, Julius Haast was linked more intimately still with the land of his choice, for he was married in that year to Mary Dobson, the daughter of Edward Dobson, the Canterbury Provincial Engineer, and sister of his young surveyor associate, Arthur Dudley Dobson, the discoverer of the Arthur's Pass-Otira route. Miss Dobson was nineteen years old, Haast was forty-one. Notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, that difference in ages, it was an ideal happy union. In 1864 there arrived on the scene what Sir James Hector, a great friend of the two families, called “the little stone-breaker,” from the fact that the newly-made father placed in the cradle of the first-born a miniature geological hammer, in the hope that the boy would follow in his footsteps. Von Haast, junior, however travelled in another direction; law and literature claimed him, and we know him as one of New Zealand's leading barristers, writers and publicists, Mr. H. F. von Haast. Following little Heinrich Ferdinand (the second name in honour of Hochstetter) came four more young Haasts and anchored the Provincial Geologist for good and all to Canterbury.

For a quarter of a century the scientific pioneer of Canterbury toiled for his province and city and the many-sided cause of knowledge. In 1886 he was appointed by the New Zealand Government with the consent and approval of the Canterbury authorities, to go to London as the Colony's Commissioner to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. There, following upon his knighthood (at the instance of the Prince of Wales)—he had been knighted in 1876 by the Emperor of Austria and thus became von Haast—other honours came to the veteran scientist. The University of Cambridge conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science, and the French Government made him an Officer d'Instructions Publique. Shortly after the opening of the Exhibition, Sir Julius urged the conversion of the collection into a permanent institution. From this appeal the Imperial Institute came into existence; but it soon assumed a very different form from that originally contemplated.

Sir Julius was suggested as the first Director of the Institute, but he declined the post; his heart was in New Zealand. He returned with his wife and his daughter who had accompanied him to Europe. Now ill-health had him in its grip; and he died in Christ-church on August 16, 1887, in the midst of his plans for the expansion of his beloved Museum.

In the last period of his life he came into personal contact in Europe with many of the great Continental scientists with whom he had been in constant correspondence from his earliest days in Canterbury. His career was fittingly crowned in the two years preceding his death not only by the honours that he received, but by the high appreciation of his labours expressed by the great men with whom he associated, and who, like many discerning fellow colonists admired and honoured his ability and revered his character. After all the years that have passed since his death in 1887, and, despite the developments in science, his reputation as a scientist stands to-day as high as ever it did. Time proved the substantial accuracy of his professional observations.

The great founder of the true science of education in Canterbury was, from the accounts that have come to me, the pleasantest and most vivacious as well as one of the wisest of men. He must have been a splendid travelling comrade, the best of companions under the most dismal of camping conditions in the wet and dripping Westland bush, in a mountain-side cave, or in the sandfly-infested country where explorers' tempers were frayed by the tiny torturers. He was a great and cultivated musician, a robust and artistic singer of great feeling, as well as an accomplished violinist. His fine stalwart figure, his kindly jolly air that came of a sanguine and generous temperament and his many accomplishments made him a leader in culture in the colonial community.

In a recent book on New Zealand and its people, the writer remarked that few biographies of eminent colonists had yet been written, and he suggested that memoirs of some of our great New Zealanders were overdue. This is particularly applicable to the useful life of such a man as Sir Julius von Haast, with his so-greatly varied career. There is, I think, only one man who could write it satisfactorily, and that is his son, Mr. H. F. von Haast. I hope his busy life will yet allow him time to tell the story of his father's life which he has long contemplated.

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