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 ja«s 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, so mild among ourselves, is wondrously fatal whenever it gets among 

 the island populations of the Pacific. Even smallpox has never been 

 known in these islands and happily the natives wfll 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 drainage 

 in their encampment. As yet, we have not brought to them smallpox, or 

 cholera, or plague, or yellow fever, or typhus, or relapsing fever, or ague, 

 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 special enquiries from 

 doctors — the only class of men whose opinion is worth taking — and they 

 confirm me in the belief that, though the Maoris are affected by it, yet its 



