AFTER MANY YEARS

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 23, 21 October 1921, Page 5

AFTER MANY YEARS

MASKELL COLLECTION RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND.

Many old Wellington residents will remember the late Mr. W. M. Maskell, F.R.M.S., one time Registrar of the University of New Zealand. Mr. Maskell. late in life, took up scale insect investigation as a 'hobby, and persevered in his research until he became one of tho foremost entymologists of the world. His classification of New Zealand native scales wn.s unique, nnd attracted world-wide- attention. On Mr. Maskell’s death, his collection was taken over by the New Zealand Government, and some years later was forwarded on loan to file Bureau of Entymology, Washington, D.C. It is many years since the Maskell collection went over to the States, but since then correspondence regarding it Has been passing between the Department in New Zealand and Washington, where the collection was specifically dealt with, reclassified, and photographed. This work was considerably delayed by the Great War, but for which ' the 'collection might have been returned much earlier. Tho Maskell collection has now been returned to New Zealand by the United States Government, and has been placed in the. laboratory of the Depart incut, where its usefulness in connection with scale classification work will be of immense value. New Zealand benefits by tho delay which has occurred in returning tho specimens, as the Americans, with their usual thoroughness, have for. warded a bound volume of the collection, beautifully photographed, reclassified, and described. The arrangement of genera and species and the synonomy U’lows exactly that in the Fernaid Catalogue of the Coectdal, 1903. Mr. J. A. Campbell, Director of the Horticultural Division of tho New Zealand Department of Agriculture, when in the United States in 1919, inquired into the matter of the Maskell collection, and Professor Howard. Chief Entymologist of the UniFed States Federal Department of Agriculture, paid a very high compliment to the late Mr. Maskell s research work, describing it. as one of tho most valuable in the world.