Те Raxer Hinoa.— The Passing of the Maori. 363 
look forward with a fatal resignation to the destiny of the final extinction 
of their race. They themselves say, ‘As clover killed the fern, and the 
European dog the Maori dog, as the Maori rat was destroyed by the pakeha 
rat, so our people also will be gradually supplanted and. exterminated by 
the Europeans. ” 
From Featherston in 1856 to Walsh in 1907 is half a century. The 
cumulative experience and study of half a century led the writers quoted 
above to see the Maori race facing nothing but rapid extinction. In view 
of the fact that these writers gathered the procurable data of their day 
and subjected them to careful analysis, their conclusions must be treated 
the vanished Maori rat and the extinct Maori dog. They do not appear 
to belong to the same class of mammal. The native fern does not seem 
to be tamely giving way to the European clover. In this respect the Maori 
availed of as he led us to expect. Sir Walter Buller's twenty-five years 
grace expired in 1909. The race that Archdeacon Walsh said was already 
lington Philosophical Society. Since the last address was delivered fifteen 
years have elapsed. It is therefore fitting that the present condition of 
POPULATION. 
Cook estimated the Maori population as 100,000. As pointed out by 
varjous writers, this estimate could have been only a very rough guess, 
formed from the coastal tribes that he saw. 
The west coast of the North Island he never explored. Northern Tara- 
naki, from the evidence afforded by the denseness of the terraced hills, 
must have supported a very large population. Whakatane, the Waimana 
by one call). Consider the huge garrisons that must have been required 
to man the crater-forts near Pakaraka and Ohaeawai, in the Bay of Islands, 
food-supplies, and, incidentally, of course, on the ability to hold the terri- 
tory producing them. The larger rivers and inland lakes produced fish in 
abundance in their due seasons. This supply was not confined to eels, but 
smaller fish, not considered by Europeans, made up for their lack of size 
by their quantity. 
