248 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



sixty-eight per cent! This has been attributed by most 

 writers to the profligacy of the women, to former bloody 

 wars, and to the severe labor imposed on conquered tribes 

 and to newly introduced diseases, which have been on sev- 

 eral occasions extremely destructive. No doubt these and 

 other such causes have been highly efficient, and may ac- 

 count for the extraordinary rate of decrease between the 

 years 1832 and 1836; but the most potent of all the causes 

 seems to be lessened fertility. According to Dr. Ruschen- 

 berger of the U. S. Navy, who visited these islands between 

 1835 and 1887, in one district of Hawaii, only twenty-five 

 men out 1,134, and in another district only ten out of 637, 

 had a family with as many as three children. Of eighty 

 married women, only thirty-nine had ever borne children; 

 and "the oflS.cial report gives an average of half a child to 

 each married couple in the whole island." This is almost 

 exactly the same average as with the Tasmanians at Oyster 

 Cove. Jarves, who published his History in 1843, says that 

 "families who have three children are freed from all taxes; 

 those having more, are rewarded by gifts of land and other 

 encouragements." This unparalleled enactment by the gov- 

 ernment well shows how infertile the race had become. The 

 Rev. A. Bishop stated in the Hawaiian "Spectator," in 

 1839, that a large proportion of the children die at early 

 ages, and Bishop Staley informs me that this is still the 

 case, just as in New Zealand. This has been attributed to 

 .the neglect of the children by the women, but it is probably 

 in large part due to innate weakness of constitution in the 

 children, in relation to the lessened fertility of their parents. 

 There is, moreover, a further resemblance to the case of New 

 Zealand, in the fact that there is a large excess of~ male over 

 female births: the census of 1872 gives 31,650 males to 25,247 

 females of all ages, that is 125.36 males for every 100 fe- 

 Tnales; whereas in all civilized countries the females exceed 

 , the males. No doubt the profligacy of the women may in 

 part account for their small fertility; but their changed hab- 

 its of life is a much more probable cause, and which will at 



