494 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



made statements chiefly consisting of vague and shadowy beliefs, and not 

 the results of patient enquiries. Upwards of forty years have come and 

 gone since this colony was founded, and since 1874 the censuses have been 

 so many and so accurate, and the population so large, as to afford us a suf- 

 ficient supply of facts whereon to base the statements made by us. In the 

 childhood of the colony several army surgeons collected statistics of the 

 healthiness of the troops stationed in it, and compared these with those of 

 our soldiers quartered in other parts of the globe. These statistics, though 

 few, pointed strongly to the fact that the climate of New Zealand was good. 



In conjunction with my friend Mr. Frankland I proposed to examine 

 carefully what were the grounds on which this belief was based. V/e 

 agreed to contribute a joint paper. Subsequently this plan was slightly 

 changed, but the statistics in this paper were all supplied by him, and of 

 their accuracy there can be no question. Mr. Frankland's great mathe- 

 matical powers and his long and thorough acquaintance with the vital 

 statistics of the colony are an absolute guarantee of their correctness. 



Any physician investigating the question whether this colony is or is 

 not healthy, would make search for diseases, old and new ; for diseases 

 well known to him and for diseases hitherto unrecognized. He would 

 draw up a list of prevalent diseases, just as a botanist or geologist would 

 prepare lists of plants and rocks. 



Subjoined is a list (No. I.) of diseases known to exist in this colony and 

 another (No. II.) of diseases not yet imported, whilst the last list (No. III.) 

 shows the list of diseases peculiar to these islands. Though I have taken 

 great pains and made many enquiries for the purposes of making these lists 

 as accurate as possible, it must be remembered that no such lists as the 

 first two can be perfect. Of one thing we are certain, viz., that all the 

 diseases named in No. I. have actually obtained in New Zealand. It is 

 possible that a few in No. II. may also have existed. These lists are com- 

 piled from various sources. The Eegistrar-General's returns are valuable 

 only for diseases which kill ; they take no heed of the others. 



An examination of these lists shows us that people coming to this colony 

 have no need to fear that they run a risk of catching new diseases, for the 

 only indigenous diseases are the bite of the katipo, and very rare deaths 

 from the eating of two or three different kinds of poisonous berries. From 

 the Maoris, the original inhabitants, we have not acquired one single disease. 

 They have not one new disease of their own. Earlier writers on the colony 

 talk of a disease called ngerengere, but this is merely a variety of pure 

 leprosy, which is common to all the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific 

 isles. It presents no feature worthy of notice, except that it is fast disap- 

 pearing, and is far less common now than it was forty years ago. Probably 



