Frederick Wollaston Hutton

Career Military At the age of 18.5 years, Hutton purchased a commission as ensign in the 23rd (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot on 18 May 1855. Stationed at Malta, November 1855–8 March 1856, he moved on to take part in the Crimean War, 9 March–21 July 1856, and Indian Mutiny, 28 September 1857 – 22 May 1858. Following Crimea, and having advanced to rank of lieutenant by purchase on 27 March 1857, the regiment embarked for the war in China but as with other forces, was diverted at Singapore to Calcutta for the mutiny in India. and accompanied his regiment to Malta.

Back in England in 1860, and having devoted some study to geology, Hutton was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London (FGS). Over the next few years he completed military training at Staff College, Sandhurst, and Woolwich.

In 1862, he was attached first to the Royal Horse Artillery and thereafter to the 9th Lancers. Following elevation to rank of captain by purchase on 2 December 1862, he married Annie Gouger Montgomerie, at Holy Trinity, Paddington, London, on 4 February 1863. He re-joined his regiment at Malta but was appointed to the staff of Ireland from 11 September 1863, as Brigade Major, 2nd Infantry Brigade, at the Curragh. After some nine months at the Curragh, Hutton moved to head quarters in Dublin as Deputy Assistant Quarter Master General from 1 July 1864, then, in November 1865, resigned and sold out of the army.

Scientific The Huttons—Frederick, Annie, their children Alice and Gilbert, and two servants—left Gravesend, on the clipper Queen of the North, on 17 January 1866, bound for new opportunities in New Zealand. After a tedious voyage, passing Tristan da Cunha, Cape of Good Hope, Île Saint-Paul, South Cape of Tasmania, Three Kings and North Cape of New Zealand, the clipper came to anchor off Queen Street wharf, Auckland, on Monday, 11 June.

In May 1867, Captain Hutton volunteered to take charge of Auckland Museum, articles of which had been suffering in its Grafton Road cottage, and sought to put the institution in good order with its relocation to the very large basement room of the new Provincial Government offices on the corner of Princes Street and Victoria Quadrant—The Northern Club building. Accepted as Honorary Curator by the Superintendent of Auckland Province, John Williamson, he worked his way through arranging and classifying the confused and inconsistently recorded collections. Additionally, he prepared exhibition of the objects, received further specimens, artefacts etc. and worked towards establishing a museum library. Hutton and Thomas Gillies initiated the inaugural public meeting of 6 November 1867, held in the Board Room of the Auckland Board of Commissioners, to establish the Auckland Philosophical Society; soon renamed Auckland Institute. The meeting was called immediately following a conversation they'd had in relation to the action taken by the General Assembly of New Zealand in constituting the New Zealand Institute. James Hector, manager of the Institute in Wellington, had recently suggested to Gillies the propriety of establishing branches throughout New Zealand, especially in Auckland. Auckland Institute was formally incorporated with the New Zealand Institute on 10 June 1868. Auckland Museum was transferred to the Auckland Institute in October 1869.

In 1867 he was employed by the Superintendent of Auckland to carry out a geological survey of the lower Waikato. On 8 June 1869, he reported the discovery of substantial coalfields between the Maramarua and Whangamarino rivers, which another settler intended to work for his flax mill. Later in 1869, Hutton and family sold their Epsom home in Auckland and moved to the Waikato, where he'd erected a steam-powered flax mill at Churchill, a station on the western bank of the Waikato River, near Whangape Stream. Hutton's venture, however, proved uneconomic and in consequence his flax mill with 500 acres of flax land, along with a farm of 2,000 acres situated on Lake Whangape, were put up for sale in March 1872.

He'd joined the Geological Survey of New Zealand in 1866, becoming Provincial Geologist of Otago in 1874. At the same time, he was made lecturer in geology at the University of Otago and curator of the museum there. After the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera he wrote one of the official reports and postulated the eruption was due to moltern material reaching the surface in a volcanic dyke. Hutton became professor of biology at Canterbury College in 1880, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1892. The following year, he also took on the curatorship of the Canterbury Museum. Towards the end of his life, Hutton was made president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union. He was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1891. He was the first President of the New Zealand Institute (which later became the Royal Society of New Zealand), from 1904 to his death in 1905; he was followed by Sir James Hector. He was one of the inaugural vice-chairmen of the New Zealand Alpine Club, which was founded in July 1891.

He worked successively at the Colonial Museum, Wellington (1871–1873) (now called Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand); Otago Museum, Dunedin (1874–1879); and the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch (1887–1905).

Hutton died on the return voyage on the SS Rimutaka from England on 27 October 1905, and was buried at sea off Cape Town, South Africa.

He is commemorated in the Hutton Medal and Hutton Memorial Fund, awarded for scientific works bearing on the zoology, botany or geology of New Zealand. Hutton's shearwater (Puffinus huttoni), a sea bird, was named after him and the cave wētā Neonetus huttoni.

Evolution In 1860, he wrote a supportive review of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species for the journal, The Geologist. In 1861, he wrote an article defending Darwinism in the same journal. Hutton defended Darwin from the objections of creationist Adam Sedgwick, which he described as "gross ironical misrepresentations". He wrote that creationism was a "mere assertion, an evasion of the question, a cloak for ignorance."

Arms of Frederick Wollaston Hutton Armorial bearings—Or, on a fesse sable, surmounted by a pale invected of the last, pierced of the field, three stags' heads caboshed counterchanged. Mantling sable and or. Crest—On a wreath of the colours, in front of a fern-brake proper, a stag's head caboshed or. Motto—Post tenebras spero lucem (After darkness, I hope for light)