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The Tenth Volume of Tuatara

J. Williams

The publication of the first number of the tenth volume of Tuatara is an occasion which the Biological Society of the University has rightly thought proper to notice in a special way. The journal has now existed in printed form for some sixteen years, but its origins go back still further, for it appeared in cyclostyled form in 1942. Mr. W. H. Dawbin gives a most interesting account of these beginnings in an article appearing elsewhere in this issue. Throughout its history Tuatara has been the journal of a students' society and this, I think, especially worthy of remark. All the work connected with the journal, other than printing, is voluntary and the student members of the publishing committee play an active part in bringing out each number. Members of the staff of the Botany and Zoology Departments assist with the preparation and editing of papers and provide general supervision.

It could scarcely have been forseen by those who in 1942 saw fit to duplicate for the use of themselves and other members of the Society brief reports of field excursions which the Society organised in that year that they were starting a venture which would become the Tuatara of today, a leading publication of its kind, printing over 1,000 copies of each issue. But so the development has come about. Those who have directed the journal have had as their aim to publish articles of interest to senior secondary school students and their teachers, university students and amateur naturalists. At the same time the journal has contained work of value to practising scientists, showing the current applications and future scope of biological research. Most of the leading scientists of the country whose work has a biological significance have been contributors, and for some an article written in their student days for Tuatara has been the beginning of a distinguished list of published papers. The sum total of information on the New Zealand fauna and flora contained in the journal is now so extensive and of such quality as to make the series an important part of the library of the biological scientist interested in this part of the world.

That so considerable a result should have come from so modest a beginning is the best assurance that Tuatara will continue to play an important part for the future in the advancement of the biological sciences. On behalf of the University, I congratulate the Biological Society on its achievement in bringing Tuatara to its present high standard and I offer the University's best wishes for an ever increasing sphere of usefulness for the journal.