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Harry Carse, 1857–1930.
The death of Harry Carse, which occurred on November 25th, 1930, has removed from our midst one of the few remaining members of the old school of taxonomic botanists whose labours have done so much to place New Zealand botany on a secure foundation.
Carse was born at Leek, a small town in Staffordshire, his parents being of Scottish descent. Most of his early education was received at Musselburgh, near the Firth of Forth within easy reach of Edinburgh, and after he left school he took up a position in Macclesfield Bank, of which his father was manager. After he had spent some years at banking work, the call of the new lands across the seas became too strong to be resisted and he embarked on the s.s. Kaikoura and set foot in this country in 1885.
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For some time, a stranger in a strange land, he had to take up whatever work was available, but before long he came into contact with R. J. O'Sullivan, Inspector of Schools under the Auckland Education Board, who recognised him as one whose education and personal qualities fitted him for more important work than that in which he was engaged, and he was given the post of assistant teacher at the Newton West School. His next position was that of relieving teacher at Helensville, and later he was sent to Chelsea to open a school newly-established in that district. From that time onwards
Harry Carse, 1837, 1930
for over thirty years he served under the Auckland Education Board at Hunua, Kaitaia, Mauku, Kaiaka, and Maungatapere. The only break in his long period of teaching service was a space of two years, when he resigned and engaged in dairy farming at Kaiaka. Later, he took the post of teacher at the Karaka School, and after his resignation a few years later he came to Auckland to retire, and lived successively at New Lynn and One Tree Hill.
Always a lover of Nature, Carse found ample scope for his studies in the various parts of the Auckland district in which he was stationed, and he was much encouraged by Petrie, who as Inspector of Schools, regularly came into contact with him and rendered him much assistance. It is not surprising, therefore, that Carse developed
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into a taxonomic botanist, the class to which Petrie himself belonged. He was chiefly concerned in collecting and cataloguing plants and in the making of an herbarium, and paid less attention to their activity as living organisms or to their relations with their envitonment. In this field of botanical study Carse did a great deal of extremely valuable work and added many species to the flora. His most outstanding work was done among the Filices and the Cyperaceae. Most of his collecting work was done in the Auckland Province, but he also collected in the Tongariro National Park, and in other localities farther south. He exchanged freely with local and southern botanists, and was also in constant communication with overseas pteridologists, especially Christensen, of Copenhagen. His papers, most of which appear in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, are mainly descriptive of new plants which by his keen observation and painstaking diagnosis he had added to the flora. His enthusiasm knew no bounds, and at every opportunity he was out in the field with his simple but effective collecting apparatus in search of new treasures to add to his herbarium. The latter, while not so large or so comprehensive as those of Cheeseman and Petrie, is an extremely interesting and valuable one, well-arranged and catalogued, and the Canterbury Museum, to which he left it, has been indeed fortunate in securing a collection so valuable. During his lifetime he presented a considerable number of specimens to the herbarium of the Auckland University College.
His achievements in the domain of New Zealand field botany will be more greatly appreciated when it is remembered that he was largely self-taught, having acquired his fund of botanical knowledge by wide reading and unceasing study and observation in the field. As regards his personal qualities, those who were fortunate enough to be his friends can have but one opinion. He was a gentleman in the highest connotation of that term, and will be much missed by those who have known his kindly and genial nature and his readiness to help all who came to him in difficulty.
T. L. Lancaster.