236 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
of the northern island. In 1850 the Government published a return, care- 
fully put together by Mr. Fenton, which, including the Chatham Islands, 
totalled 56,049. In 1870 another census accounted for only 87,000. 
In Cook’s time inter-tribal hostilities were frequent, and slaughter great. 
Tasman, in 1642, mentions seeing people in great abundance. Was the 
population even then larger than in Cook's day? Had it previously been 
larger still? Judging from the reception Tasman’s crew received, the 
Maoris were addicted to fighting long ago. 
So also of the Sandwich Islanders, by Cook set down at 400,000. An 
actual census in 1882 gave 130,315; another, in 1836, 108,579 ; in 1850 
there were not 80,000 remaining ; m the latest return makes iio num- 
ber 56,897. 
The Society and Hervey groups have probably suffered a ——— 
reduction in their inhabitants. A known loss, of large amount, is certain. 
Cook saw at Tahiti a review of 830 canoes, with crews numbering 7,760. 
Immense numbers of men were spectators, and all these were from a part 
of the island. Wallis and Bougainville corroborate the account of a large 
population. 
Although bees swarm more readily from a small hive than from a large 
one, being driven thereto by want of space, so most of the human off- 
shoots which have afterwards attained large proportions have first been 
sent out from small parent stocks: witness the Phenician colonies ; those 
from Greece, in Italy and Sicily: in recent times, the United States, 
Canada, Australasia, from our mother land; Brazil, from Portugal. Yet, 
in all these cases the people of the original home bore a much higher 
numerical proportion to its colonies than Samoa (with its limited area and 
people) would have done to the multitudes dispersed throughout the count- 
less isles a century ago. 
At what era did the progenitors of the former hosts quit Samoa in their 
canoes ? How many ages must be allotted for the increase ? 
Let us turn now to the linguistic affinities. Mr. Ranken writes :—* The 
purity of race in Samoa is only one of many facts showing the first settlement 
in the South Seas to have been in Samoa. Their language shows it in the 
retention of the use of the*s'. No other Mahori dialect has it. Even the 
Tongans, in all their intimacy with Fiji and Samoa, have lost it. Language 
is limited by scenes, wants, objects, ete. As people spread into smaller com- 
munities, each isolated, their dialect became reduced and also fixed. There 
was no one to borrow terms from ; not even use for all the words they had. 
Thus: a small colony leaving Baina for a coral atoll, having only a few cocoa- 
nut trees, lost the names of every tree and bird in the Samoan forest: ; lost the 
names of distinctions, uses, customs, laws, and every term eonnected with 
