In a two day sale to be held on November 3rd and 4th, A+O will offer the entire Arthur T Pycroft Collection of Rare New Zealand, Australian and Pacific, Books, Manuscripts and Photographs.Arthur Pycroft (1875-1971) was the “essential gentleman amateur”. Like many other untrained enthusiasts, he made considerable contributions as a naturalist, scholar, historian and conservationist. Pycroft was extremely well informed and on friendly terms with the leading New Zealand men of science, naturalists and museum directors of his era. From an early age he developed a “hands on” approach to all his interests. He corresponded with the famous ornithologist Sir Walter Buller regarding his re discovery of the Little Black Shag in the Bay of Islands and other species later included in Buller’s 1905 Supplement. He learnt the art of taxidermy and practised it “on the side” to supplement his then modest income. He liked to tell the story of how he had eaten a Huia, New Zealand’s rare and extinct bird; one had been sent to him for mounting and after extracting the body he handed it to his land lady with the request that she cook it for him.
New Zealand’s many off shore islands also fascinated him. In the summer of 1903-04 he spent nearly six weeks on Taranga (Hen Island), the first of several visits. In 1928 he went to Little Barrier, in 1929 to the Kermadecs with Guthrie Smith, and in 1932 he was in Melanesia. When Sir Robert Falla named a newly discovered species of petrel ( Pterodroma pycrofti) it was in recognition of Pycroft’s long service to ornithology and the fact he had organised the expedition to Hen Island on which the birds had been discovered. He was also a member of the “Moa Searching Committee” whose objectives included to seek evidence that moas of one species or another had been killed and eaten by the Polynesian invaders. The quest for Moa skeletons took him from Doubtless Bay to the limestone caves of the King Country and Waikaremoana.
Another special area of study lay mostly in Auckland city and to the far north whose history and development he observed closely for more than eight decades.
Arthur Pycroft and his wife Minna, herself a recognised ornithological and botanical artist, spent four years in England in the 1930s. This English sojourn was a halcyon time in which the New Zealander frequented second hand book shops in search of rare books. The sheer scope of the collection is a reflection of the depth of all these interests in combination with a dedicated and acutely sensitivity to acquisitions. The hitherto untouched library is rich in rare books, pamphlets, manuscripts and photographs. Many of the more notable items have a unique association with personalities who helped shape early New Zealand and Pacific history.
