Newman. — Is New Zealand a Healthy Country ? 509 



chest affections. Cement-workers suffer much, and so do all engaged in 

 the making of pottery. With the multiplication of mines will come multi- 

 plicity of accidents and deadly disasters. 



(10.) Our great Distance from the busy Haunts of Men. 



Separated as we are by thousands of miles of ocean and fresh breezes we 

 are necessarily in less danger of catching our neighbours' diseases. 



(11.) Soil. 



Apart from the foregoing causes of a lessened death-rate must be noted 

 the effect of soil and climate. These " Summer Isles of Eden lying in dark 

 purple seas " possess almost everywhere the most perfect natural drainage. 

 The swamps are few, and are fast disappearing. They seem almost harm- 

 less. Among the white people malarious fevers are not caught, though 

 many dwell on the edge of these swamps. Men work in them and never 

 get ague as in the fens at Home or in the Maremma in Western Italy, or 

 jungle fever as in Asia and Africa. Colonists work and live among swamps 

 and in forests, and get no evils except rheumatic and chest complaints. 

 They dig in swamps, but the black upturned humus, though composed of 

 decaying and decayed vegetable matter, brings them no harm. " No flat 

 malarian world of reed and rush " troubles the colonist. Neither does the 

 soil contain other evils for man. The water flowing through swamps leaves 

 it full perhaps of decaying organic matter, but free from germs or parasites 

 hurtful to man. The soil and vegetation contain no parasites peculiar to 

 New Zealand, nothing like Bilharzia ha^matobia or Guinea worm. As the 

 black population had invaded these isles only a few centuries and was always 

 sparse and had few diseases, the soil was scarcely, if at all, polluted, and 

 consequently we — the white people — when we dig or plough, upturn a 

 virgin soil, and not, as in many countries, a soil full of deadly organisms. 



(12.) Climate. 



The climate of these islands, lying in the temperate zone, presents few 

 features of note. Stretching as they do through many a league of latitude, 

 lying in the path of the antitrades, with a lofty backbone of mountains 

 running through each island, the climate is exceedingly equable in each 

 district, though that of the districts varies greatly. The changes of climate 

 in each have been carefully noted for many years past, and these records 

 are embalmed in the pages of these volumes. For our purpose the chief 

 points worthy of note are the equability of the various districts, — e.g., the 

 continuous dryness and heat of Hawke's Bay and the raininess of Westland, 

 and the cold of Southland. There are no dangerous siroccos or typhoons, 

 or pamperos : no pestilential deadly breezes. The winds flowing from the 

 uninhabited antarctic regions, or from the equator, waft to us no diseases. 

 The continuous heat of the hottest districts is cold when compared with 



