RIVAL GEOLOGISTS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1929, Page 7

RIVAL GEOLOGISTS

An incident in which two men ol science figured some 40 years ago was recalled by Mr G. Jobberns in bis presidential address before tbe Canterbury Philosophical Institute (says the Lyttelton Times). He gave a sketch of a little dispute between Sir Julius von Ilaast and another eminent geologist, Mr A. M’Kav. According to this account, Sir Julius found Mr -M’Kay working in a flax mill, and employed him in excavating for moa bones and reptilian remains at "Waipara. North Canterbury. Later, they worked together on a deposit of moa bones at Moabone Point, near Ited•liffs. M’Kay, having joined the stafl of the Geological Survey in Wellington, wrote a paper on the deposit that opposed von Haast’s views. Ibis so angered von Haast that he abused M’Kay soundly. Sir James Hector refused von Haast’s demand that .M’Kay’s paper should be suppressed from the “Transactions of New Zealand Institute.” Tlr controversy caused excitement among /New Zealand scientists. It got into the newspapers, M’Kay writing to them \ igorolls and biting replies to von Haast’s attacks. Finally von Haast took it to the Koval Society in England, and there, apparently, it ended, after .M’Kay had used it as a theme for a poem. Mr Jobberns spoke of M’Kay’s remarkable talents and bis imaginative powers as a geologist, and said that von Haast’s action in taking him from the flaxmill and putting him on to geological work was one of von Haast’s greatest contributions to the study of geology in New Zealand.