Correspondence

item details

NameCorrespondence

ProductionJohn Golding Myers; creating agency; 1916-1924

Classificationletters, registers, catalogs

Materialspaper, ink, cardboard

Materials SummarySorted alphabetical by correspondent's name

Techniqueshandwriting

Registration NumberCA000450

Credit lineGift of Mrs Thomas Cockcroft, 1978

Overview

Letters received; mainly relating to Bird research and exchanges. Little is known of the provenance of this collection.

John Golding Myers (1897-1942) was born in England, emigrated to New Zealand with his parents in 1911, served in WWI, and then from 1919-24 was a biologist in the Biology Section of the Department of Agriculture in Wellington. In his spare time Myers was gathering material for a survey paper on "The present position of the endemic birds of New Zealand" to present at the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in Wellington in January 1923, and the correspondence in series CA000450 is largely the responses to his requests for records of the rarer birds for this survey paper. His paper was not included in the Report of the AAAS meeting but he published it in the New Zeakabd Journal of Science and Technology 6(2) (August 1923). In 1924 Myers won an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship which enabled him to do higher studies at the university of his choice - he went to Harvard and went on to a career in entomology, working in many countries until his death in a motor accident in Sudan in 1942.