468 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
prove wonderfully in appearance. Archdeacon Williams attributes the de- 
crease of the race chiefly to the dreadful mortality existing among the 
children. Most observers have had their attention drawn to this fact. No 
more striking difference between a Maori pa and a white village can be 
noticed than the fewness of the children in the one with the multitude in 
the other, and the difference in the physique of the feeble black and the 
healthy white child is equally remarkable. Though, as I shall show here- 
after, the one race is noticeable for its sterility and the other for its 
fecundity, undoubtedly the marked difference in the number of children 
seen in a village is due to the fact that Maori babies die out in such awful 
proportion. Any observer visiting a number of native pas could not help 
seeing that any race with so few children must inevitably soon become 
extinct. 
Imported Diseases. 
The imported diseases have, of course, been very powerful agents in 
bringing about the decrease in the race. In -the early part of this century 
a disease swept through the country like an epidemic : it is believed to have 
been a kind of influenza, but nothing is known accurately. Since our 
arrival in the colony there have been many attacks of measles which : 
have always been very fatal, especially the earlier epidemics. This dis- 
ease, 80 mild among ourselves, is wondrously fatal whenever it gets among 
the island populations of the Pacific. Even smallpox has never been 
mown in these islands and happily the natives will not suffer much 
from this disease because so many are being vaccinated. Scarlet fever 
has at times been disastrous. Diphtheria has had its victims, but, strange | 
to say, this disease and several others do not appear to have greatly 
affected the natives. I believe one of the greatest curses to the Maoris 
is the popularly-called low fever, which is nothing else than typhoid. The 
spread of this fever is largely encouraged by the absence of all drainag® 
in their encampment. As yet, we have not brought to them smallpox, ot 
cholera, or plague, or yellow fever, or typhus, or relapsing fever, or ag@® 
and it is highly probable that they will not appear. Whooping cough has 
done a good deal of damage, as it is so frequently associated with pneu 
monia, : 
Many observers not trained in medicine talk about the frightful effects 
of that “awful scourge” syphilis, and say that the Maori population 
is saturated with it, and that its fearful effects are seen in the sterility of the 
race and the astonishing mortality existing among the children. ‘To this 
disease I have paid special attention and made ee 
os rs—the only class of men whose opinion is worth : : Lede 
safe ne a a og the Maoris are ate by 308 
RP nn a a 
