Causes of the Decline of Population. 139 



want of nutritious food, a serious sterility among tlie female 

 sex. Whereas, according to Muret, out of 487 women only 

 20 (or 1 in 24) are barren on the average, the proportion 

 among the Maori amounts to 155 in every 444, or 1 in 

 2-86, 



The want of nutritious and wholesome food, their diet 

 consisting mainly of salt-fish, roots, and fruits, the absence of 

 clothing, or any care for the body, their wretched abodes, 

 and exposm-e to the weather, all these causes must greatly 

 contribute to the diminution of the race, as affecting the 

 conditions of sound health of the present generation, and 

 tending to produce those forms of disease, such as scrofula, 

 pulmonia, phthisis, &c., by which the Maories and their off- 

 spring are at present decimated. Dr. Fenton also adduces 

 the intermarriage of near relations among the New Zea- 

 lauders as one prominent cause of their disease and physical 

 degeneracy. These near alliances, however, at least among 

 the lower classes, do not seem so frequent as Dr. Fenton 

 imagined, as is apparent from the surprising diversity of 

 physiognomy and colour of skin. The chiefs indeed of the 

 tribes, who migrated from the north some four centuries since, 

 may indeed have so frequently intermarried that they now 

 constitute little other than a large family connection, but the 

 populace have most undoubtedly made frequent alliances 

 with the inhabitants of the adjoining island groups, as they 

 are to this day accustomed to do with the whites, from which 



