Obituary. xvii 
THOMAS FREDERIC CHEESEMAN, 1846-1923. 
By the death of Thomas Frederic Cheeseman on the 15th October, 1923, 
the New Zealand Institute has lost a highly distinguished Fellow whose 
name must be added to that select band—Colenso, Kirk, Haast, Hector, 
and Hutton—who, with himself, working in this country, have laid a 
lasting foundation on which is being erected the splendid edifice of New 
Zealand natural history. 
Cheeseman, though nominally an Englishman through being born at 
Hull, in Yorkshire, in 1846, was in reality a New-Zealander, since he came 
to the colony with his parents when only eight years of age, and was 
educated first at the Parnell Grammar School and later at St. John’s 
College, Auckland. His father, the Rev. Thomas Cheeseman, was at one 
time member of the old Auckland Provincial Council, and took a 
had 
way, so sound a knowledge of the plants of his neighbourhood that he 
was able to publish an accurate and comprehensive account of the plant-life 
of the Waitakarei Hills. This paper is far from being obsolete, for it is 
the sole record of a vegetation which is now profoundly modified. : 
In 1874 Cheeseman was appointed Secretary of the Auckland Institute 
and Curator of the Museum, then in its early infancy. How far-reaching 
for the scientific advancement of New Zealand, and indeed for the general 
an interest in all branches of natural history. u: | 
books, twenty-two deal with zoological or ethnological subjects; indeed, it 
was this wide knowledge which fitted him so eminently for his museum 
NC was as a botanist that Cheeseman stood pre-eminent, and it is 
his work in floristic botany which has made his name widely known in 
all lands. At the time his researches commenced, the greater part of New 
Zealand was almost unknown botanically, so that a keen search for plants 
in all directions was demanded ; fresh material was also essential for the 
accurate study of many species admitted by Hooker. During his vacations, 
therefore, Cheeseman assiduously sought to remedy this state of affairs, 
and many were his excursions. The most important communications from 
his pen on this head concern the Nelson Provincial District, the Kermadec 
and Three Kings Islands, and the area from. Mangonui to the far north : 
but these by no means reflect all his activities in the field, nor give any 
