16 Transactions-— Miscellaneous. 
no present means of ascertaining, even with the slighest approach to 
definiteness, the period at which the admixture took place. But, although 
we may be justified in assuming that, however remote the period at which 
this admixture oceurred, the then progress of the Maori in some of the arts 
of eivilization had been far greater than that of the earlier inhabitants of 
the Chathams, we see, nevertheless, in the manners and customs of the 
present Mori-ori people, very little trace of this greater progress—a circum- 
stance which can, as I conceive, only be accounted for by the different 
nature of the physical conditions under which the Maori and the Mori-ori 
respectively lived. Whilst, therefore, on the one hand, we may be justified 
in assuming that changed conditions of life had produced upon the 
descendants of the Maori emigrants to the Chatham Islands a degrading 
effect, we should not, on-the other, be justified in concluding that the con- 
dition of the Maori in those islands was, at the time of tho immigration to 
the Chathams, as low as that which we now observe in the inhabitants of 
the latter group. It must not be assumed, however, that I would lay down 
as a proposition, that the same conditions of life must necessarily produce 
similar effects upon the habits and customs of all uncivilized peoples ex- 
posed to their influence. Indeed, we find the Hottentot, the Kaffir, and the 
Bojesman, existing under much the same physical conditions, and yet pre- 
senting very different states of progress, due, no doubt, to the fact, that 
each one of these races is, itself, one of the conditions which produces 
modifications in the others. All I suggest is, that in considering the 
habits and customs of isolated uncivilized peoples, whose relations to some 
specific neighbouring race may be well ascertained, but whose habits and 
customs differ in important respects from those of that neighbouring race, 
we must take into account, for all purposes of comparison, the physical 
conditions under which each of them exists. If I am correct in this, it 
becomes important, when recording observations upon the habits and 
customs of an isolated uncivilized people, even where its affinity to any 
known race may not yet be established, that we should also correctly record 
all we can learn as to the physical conditions of the habitat in which we 
find it. 
I do not propose to follow this course in the present paper, simply 
because the physical geography—including in that term the natural pro- 
duetions of the Chatham Islands—have already been described by several 
writers, as well as by myself, in papers read before this Society; but these 
must unquestionably be borne in mind in any comparisons which may be 
instituted between the Mori-ori and the Maori on the one hand, and 
between the Mori-ori and any other race between which and it a connection 
can be traced, on the other. 
