Abstract
In 2014, the Drier Collection of New Zealand molluscs, comprising 4,000–5,000 lots, was transferred from Museum of Vancouver to Auckland Museum. This shell collection is thought to have been assembled between 1926 and 1929 by Dr Ezra Newton Drier, who came to New Zealand in 1916 as the surgeon aboard a troop ship. He and his family settled in New Zealand until in early 1930 they embarked on a two-year world tour before returning permanently to Vancouver, Canada, where Dr Drier died in 1942. While in New Zealand, he met A.W.B. Powell, who started him on his shell collecting, and Drier is believed to have carried out most of his collecting between 1926 and 1931 in New Zealand and Australia. The collection is considered to be of high value to Auckland Museum because it will contribute additional baseline biodiversity data for the mid- to late-1920s, a period for which few dates are recorded in the Auckland Museum molluscan collections. Initially little was known of Dr Drier himself, but as part of further research to contextualise the mollusc collection, a picture of an energetic, perhaps driven man, has emerged from information held in online resources and the archives of Museum of Vancouver and Auckland Museum.
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Citation
Blom, Wilma M. (2023). Dr Ezra Newton Drier (1871–1942) and his collection of New Zealand Mollusca https://doi.org/10.32912/ram.2023.57.2