472 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
which time only three or four births were registered. In the Sandwich 
Islands, from among eighty married women, M. Delapelin found that 
only thirty-nine had children. There were only nineteen childrén in the 
twenty principal families of chiefs, and in the same islands, in 1849, the 
official statistics of M. Renny gave 4,520 deaths to only 1,422 births. The 
Kanakas, though separated by so many thousands of miles of water, are singu- 
larly like the Maoris in appearance, language, and mythology: therefore it is 
not a little strange to find among them sterility like that which exists among 
the Maoris. Nearly all the persons knowing the Maoris well whom I have 
happened to consult, are agreed on this point, viz., that many women are 
absolutely sterile, and that the others are only moderately fertile, having 
only one, two, or three children. The Maoris themselves recognize the fact 
but can assign no cause. Colenso says that children are becoming fewer 
every year, and that of the seven principal chiefs in Ahurizi, all but one was 
childless, and of the one who had four sons three were fruitless. Judge 
Fenton gives some remarkable statistics in his ‘‘ Observations on the State 
of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of New Zealand, 1859.” In certain well-known 
tribes in the Waikato, between the years 1844 to 1858, there were: Deaths, 
650; births, 820. He gives the following striking table of results :— 
. eo] 
: 3 a} 3 
ae wees ee : z E 
- pg elalaiale| a4 
£2 /2/43/8/8/4| 8/214 
213/8/8/2/8| 8 l8l3 
oO 3 
met me ae ee be i 
Number of wives whose issue are et | 46 | 8 | 221141 321 31 | 107 | 15 | 221 
Number of wives whose issue are dead..| 19 4|10/ 11 2 
Number of barren wives .. .. = ..| 24} 5/11] 9}15| 8| 75} 7 | 154 
Farther on in this book he estimates that the ratio pepe 
productive Maori women is as 1 to 2°86. To account for this startling 
infertility many theories have been invented, but it is more than certain 
that the great bulk of them are imaginary and baseless. Doubtless this 
infertility arises from many causes, and not a single cause. I believe 
that the chief source of this evil is interbreeding; that the Maoris 
_ have almost always married in their own or in some nearly adjacent tribe. 
Nearly all the pure races of men and animals are infertile, as 
with the mongrels, Any reference to Darwin’s Plants and Animals under 
ct ty pt, ene ong 
: 2 will save the need of cumbering these pages ak: . 
Seek ke eee 
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