56 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
future will naturally look to the “ Transactions” for reliable in- 
formation on all these points. Newspaper literature is ephemeral 
and not always reliable ; but the fact that every paper is vouched 
for by the name of the author is some sort of guarantee that none 
but well-authenticated facts will be found in the pages of the 
“ Transactions.” Looking to the fact that the Maori race was 
dying out very rapidly ; that, in all probability, five and twenty 
years hence there would only be a remnant left, it was of the 
first importance, from an ethnological or ethnographical point 
of view, to collect and preserve, while yet there was opportunity, 
a faithful history of so interesting a people. He (Dr. Buller) 
had often heard Maoris themselves speculate on their speedy 
extinction, saying in a melancholy way, that as the Norwegian 
had destroyed the native rat, and as the indigenous birds and 
shrubs were being supplanted by the introduced ones, so surely 
would the Maori disappear before the pakeha. And this was no 
mere fancy. The abnormal condition of the population—the 
females far outnumbering the males—was the surest indication 
of national decay. Every successive enumeration of the people 
told its sad tale, and the decrease must of necessity go onina 
progressive ratio. In Cook’s time the Maori population was 
estimated at a hundred thousand; at the period of our first 
colonisation of the islands at seventy thousand; and his own 
opinion was that at the present day they donot number, men, 
women and children, more than thirty thousand. , He knew of 
districts swarming with Maoris in former years, now depopulated. 
He had known whole hapus disappear, and he had seen an entire 
family die out inthe course of a year. Twenty years ago he was 
stationed as Native Resident Magistrate at Manawatu, and he had 
then under hisnominalcontrol and management some 2500 Maoris. 
It would be difficult now within the same district to find as many 
hundred. In 1866 he was present at Rangitikei; when Dr. 
Featherston paid over the purchase money of the Manawatu 
Block, amounting to £25,000, and there were some 1500 natives 
present. It was proposed to pay over to the natives, ina month’s 
time, double that amount, for the Otamakapua Block, and he 
doubted whether in the same district 300 will be brought to- 
gether for that purpose, even counting the Hawke’s Bay con- 
tingent! Last week he was at Otaki, and took some visitors to 
the Maori church. There, where formerly about 1000 natives 
assembled to the ministrations of Archdeacon Hadfield (our 
present Bishop), it seems now difficult to fill the front seats, 
In the settlement itself—veritably a “deserted village ”— 
where formerly there were hundreds, it would be hard now to 
find scores; and, in answer to enquiries on all hands, the re- 
sponse is “kua mate.” And in this connection he mentioned a 
curious feature in the mortality of the race, namely, that the 
children and middle-aged people are the first to succumb; the old 
stock, who appear better able to resist the new order of things, . 
generally holding out the longest. That the race was doomed 
he had no doubt whatever in his own mind. What had hap- 
