102 AUCKLAND ISLANDS AUCTION Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand, on the S. shore of Waitemafa har- hor, in lat. 36 51' S., Ion. 174 45' E. ; pop. in 1871, 12,937 ; with suburbs, 18,000, chiefly Eng- lish, Irish, Scotch, and Germans. The town was founded in 1840, and became a borough in 1851. It includes an area of 16 by 7 m., is surrounded by four villages for pensioned soldiers, and di- vided into 14 wards, 11 of which are outside of the town. The streets are well laid out. There are several churches, including an Eng- lish cathedral. St. John's college is 4 m. from the town. The number of registered vessels is upward of 100. Gold was first discovered near Auckland in 1852, but the mines are not as productive as those in other parts of New Zealand. Coal fields and petroleum were found in 1859 and 1867. The chief exports are gold, wool, and gum ; the imports are manufactured goods, tea, tobacco, sugar, wine, spirits, and beer. Emigration to Auckland is checked by the insurrection of the Maoris, who in Novem- ber, 1871, committed several murders in the province, including that of Bishop Patterson. The seat of the colonial government has within a few years been removed to Wellington. AUCKLAND ISLANDS, a group lying between lat. 50 24' and 51 4' S., and Ion. 163 46' and 164 3' E., 180 m. S. of New Zealand, and 900 m. S. E. of Tasmania. They were discovered Aug. 16, 1806, by Abraham Briseoe, master of Messrs. Enderby's English whaler Ocean, and called after Lord Auckland. They are of vol- canic formation, and consist of three principal islands, the largest of which is Auckland pro- per, 30 m. long and 15 m. wide, with an area of 100,000 acres and a mountain 1,350 feet high. Port Ross, at the V. extremity of the island, contains an inlet called Laurie harbor, the station of the southern whale-fishing com- pany of the Messrs. Enderby, to whom the islands were granted by the British government, and who obtained a charter for this company in 1849 ; but the establishment was broken up in 1852. The most northerly of the group are called Enderby islets. The island of Ichaboe contains guano deposits. The soil of the Auck- land islands is very productive. AUCTION (Lat. auctio, the act of increasing), a public sale, whereat persons openly compete, the property being sold to him who will give the most for it. In Holland, and at what are called Dutch auctions elsewhere, this process is reversed, the seller naming a price beyond the value of his goods, which is gradually low- ered until some one closes with the offer. Rome, so far as is known, invented the auction, which was at first held for the sale of military spoils among the soldiers behind a spear stuck in the ground, whence it was called auctio mb Jtaita (under the spear), or subhattatio. The signal of the spear was afterward put up at all sorts of auctions, and the name was re- tained long after the signal was disused. After the death of Pertinax, A. D. 193, the prreto- rian guards put up the Roman empire at auc- tion, which, after a number of bids by Sulpician and Didius Julianus, the sole competitors, was knocked down to the latter for 6,250 drachms (about $1,000) to each soldier. In England sales "by the candle" or "by the inch of candle," which are still occasionally advertised, derive their name from an ancient practice of measur- ing the time within which the biddings must be completed by a candle, the highest bidder at the moment the inch burns out becoming the pur- chaser. The minimum price at which the owner was willing to part with his property was sometimes put under a candlestick " can-
