476 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



to result in improved fertility. The cross between a white woman and 

 a Maori man has been so rare as not to afford any data for observation. 

 As white women become more plentiful everywhere, the proportion of half- 

 castes to the two races is steadily diminishing. Early colonists and many 

 theorists believed that the two races might amalgamate ; as a matter of fact 

 the two races will never mingle, and any infinitesimal influence that the 

 white race may receive mitil that not far distant time when the Maori race 

 dies out, will thereafter be at once imperceptible. No New Zealander will 

 boast like some Americans that the blood of Pocahontas still flows in their 

 veins, or that they are connected with that magnificent race " the children 

 of the sun," the Incas. In another century only the prying ethnologist will 

 be able to ascertain in isolated spots any partial effect of the Maori blood. 

 This utter effacement of the Maori race, its complete inability to engraft 

 itself on the European race, is singular, because the Maoris are a sturdy, 

 powerful people with very distinct race characteristics, which they might 

 have been expected to transmit at least in some degree. 



Longevity. 



In discussing the rapid decrease of the race, we must not overlook the 

 question of the longevity, the life average, of the Maoris. Spite of all the out- 

 cries that medical science helps to depreciate any race, by causing the weak 

 and sickly to survive and breed, the average life of a civilized is far greater 

 than that of a wild people. The Maori race is one whose average duration 

 of life is small : they mature early and wither quickly. Lancaster (" Com- 

 parative Longevity ") suggests that, as savages lead very hard lives and die 

 often under the results of accumulated hardships, there may grow up among 

 them, as an inherited quality, a tendency to die at early periods ; or, as he 

 puts it, there may be a " disease Eskimo" or a "disease Maori." This 

 tendency to premature old age and death is marked among the Maoris ; 

 their boys and girls early attain puberty, early breed, and quickly attain 

 maturity. Maori women look old and " going down hill " when about 

 thirty, and Maori men of fifty or sixty are not to be compared for vigour 

 with Europeans of a like age. This lessened race longevity by limiting the 

 number of years during which they can breed, and by hurrying them to 

 their graves, assists in hastening the rapid disappearance of the race. 



Suvimary. 



In conclusion, I hope I have made it clear that the Maoris were a dis- 

 appearing race before we came here ; that such disappearance arises from 

 an excessive mortality, such mortality being largely due to the change from 

 living in lofty, dry, well-aired villages, to miserable, damp, low-lying un- 

 healthy whares ; that this change has caused an immense increase in the 

 number of deaths from phthisis and other diseases of the chest, and rheu- 



