1G 



RECORDS OK THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



can be so low, and the death rate so high, as is met with amongst 

 a native population living in more or less contact with the 

 European. To show this the more forcibly, I propose giving two 

 examples, one from Camooweal and the other from Mapoon, 

 Batavia River, where the natives have succumbed to the 

 encroachment and abuse of the pastoralist and pearl-sheller 

 respectively. On 24th May, 1900, there happened to be twenty- 

 five women in the native camp, all of them over puberty, i.e., 

 marriageable or of fertile age ; taking young and old alike, 

 I asked each one separately how many children, boys and girls, 

 had been born to her, and how many of these, of either sex, were 

 alive or dead. As will be seen from the following table, these 

 twenty-five women had twenty -eight live children between 

 them : — 



During the course of the preceding year I had made a similar 

 investigation amongst the native women in the camp at Mapoon, 

 making enquiry from the first one hundred women above puberty, 



