Plantations of exotic timber trees, especially pines, are looked on with disdain by many as alien monocultures, an unpleasant accommodation necessary to protect precious indigenous forests from the ...

In a letter to his wife from Nigeria in 1942, Christopher Johnson looked back on all the climbing he had done. A fighter pilot, he was en route from Britain to Egypt, and the long, circuitous journey ...

A cave beneath Mt Albert, was found to have become a dumping ground for rubbish. One hundred kilometres below Auckland, a vast reservoir of magma seethes, still testing the crust that keeps it captive ...

The 1855 celebrations marking the 15th anniversary of the young Wellington settlement had gone off splendidly under dazzling skies—the only shortcoming being a want of wind for events on the water.

In 1834, the Englishman William Swainson was at the height of his scientific career. Aged 45, loaded with honours from the scientific academies and institutions of Paris, Quebec, South Africa, ...

New Zealand’s largest earthquake in European times struck the centre of the country almost 150 years ago. Although the later Murchison and Napier earthquakes claimed more lives, neither created the ...