SMALL NUMBER OF BIRTHS. 419 
the records he had kept that, in the same tribe, there 
were, in four years, twenty-seven births and fifty 
deaths, which shews, beyond all doubt, the gradual 
but certain destruction that was going on among 
the tribe. If no means can be adopted to check 
the evil, it must eventually lead to their total 
extermination. 
By comparing the twenty-seven births in four 
years with the number of women, thirty-nine, it 
appears that there would be annually only one child 
born among every six women : a result as unnatural 
as it is evidently attributable to the increased pros- 
titution that has taken place, with regard both to 
Europeans and other native tribes, whom curiosity 
has attracted to the town, but whom the Adelaide 
tribe were not in the habit of meeting at all, or, at 
least, not in such familiar intercourse prior to the 
arrival of the white people. This single cause, with 
the diseases and miseries which it entails upon the 
Aborigines, is quite sufficient to account for the 
paucity of births, and the additional number of 
deaths that now occur among them. 
In the Moorunde statistics, given Chapter VI., the 
very small number of infants compared with the 
number of women is still more strongly illustrated ; 
but in this case only those infants that lived and 
were brought up by their mothers to the monthly 
musters were marked down ; many other births had, 
doubtless, taken place, where the children had died, 
or been killed, but of which no notice is taken, as it 
would have been impossible under the circumstances 
2 e 2 
