Algernon Thomas

He is best known for his early research (1880–83) into the life cycle of the sheep liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica), a discovery he shared with the German zoologist Rudolf Leuckart, his report on the eruption of Tarawera (1888) and his contribution to the development of New Zealand pedagogy.His elder brother Ernest Chester Thomas, (1850–1892),[3] a Gray's Inn barrister by profession, obtained early recognition as Librarian of the Oxford Union (1874) and, subsequently, for his work as secretary of the Library Association of the United Kingdom (1878–1890) and for his 1888 edition of The philobiblon of Richard de Bury.Inclined to scientific studies from an early age, Thomas profited from his attendance at Manchester Grammar during the regime of its reforming high master, Frederick Walker who had a reputation for ensuring that his pupils achieved the highest academic distinctions.Notwithstanding his father's relative wealth, his academic success and the overt support of Acland and the master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett, Thomas was unclear as to where he might gain more remunerative employment subsequent to his appointment to the museum.Selected on the recommendations of Thomas Huxley and Archibald Geikie, he delivered his first professorial lecture, 'a special discourse "On the Liver-parasite in Sheep"' alongside Acland at the University of Oxford in February 1883.[11] In addition, there was an expectation that they would also examine secondary students, give public lectures, provide reports on scientific matters to various branches of government and be active participants in the city's intellectual life.'[14] For their part, Parker, Thomas and Brown were not so much keen to step on 'colonials', but rather unimpressed by the descriptive, unanalytical, nature of the prevailing scientific methodology and sceptical of the rigour of its practitioners, many of them self-trained.[15] These tensions coalesced in June 1886 when the largest volcanic event in modern New Zealand history occurred at Mount Tarawera, 24 kilometres south east of Rotorua in the North Island.Nonetheless, Thomas did produce significant research outputs, particularly during his first two decades at the university; between 1883 and 1903 he published thirteen scientific papers ranging in scope from observations on volcanic rocks of the Taupo district, notes on Tuatara embryology and an account of the prothallium of Phylloglossum.While University of New Zealand degrees were initially set and examined in the United Kingdom, he developed courses in both biology and geology that focussed on the local condition and emphasised fieldwork.[21] Thomas' pragmatic approach to his teaching anticipated the development of an understanding of New Zealand's natural environment based on scientific method rather than on the fragmented observation of phenomena.[23] In 1891, Thomas moved a resolution at the Christchurch meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, seconded by G M Thomson, encouraging the preservation of the native fauna and flora of New Zealand.[25] In April 1894, emboldened by the success of this move, he advocated the preservation of the native flora and fauna of the nearby Waitākere Ranges and subsequently was the chief speaker in a delegation that sought to persuade the Auckland City Council to acquire the region as a scenic reserve.[27] On taking up his appointment at AUC, Thomas initiated a scheme where, in the absence of any such facility in Auckland, the college grounds – such as they were – would be developed as a precursor botanical garden of indigenous flora.This engagement with applied science prompted an interest in horticulture and in 1890 he acquired a denuded ten acre (4 hectares) section in the Auckland suburb of Epsom which he and his wife Emily developed into an extensive garden while retaining its key geological feature, a remnant lava field of the nearby Maungawhau volcanic cone.The association was an Oxford creation – Acland himself was an honorary fellow of Balliol College – and many of those involved with it had served as lecturers with the university extension programme at Toynbee Hall in London's East End.In a statement that retains contemporary significance, Thomas opined that 'The true way ... to protect the interests of the working classes is to afford them opportunities of acquiring such knowledge and skill as will enable them to hold their own in competition with the rest of the world.[33] Thomas's educational concerns prompted his election by the Senate of the University of New Zealand to the Auckland Grammar School Board in 1899, chaired by George Maurice O'Rourke who was also chairman of the AUC council.In October 1913, a newly elected Reform government introduced legislation into the New Zealand Parliament creating a governmental scientific advisory body, the Board of Science and Art.[35] Ross Galbreath asserts that the government intended that the board's primary function was to manage the Dominion (formerly Colonial) Museum and to publish scientific journals and reports, but its members appear to have had greater ambitions.