356 
Population , Sfc. of 
mothers; and, secondly, from want of proper food and 
clothing. Some persons may perhaps think it difficult to 
reconcile the first of these with the hypothesis that 
generally prevails, that the New Zealanders, in general, 
are fond of their children. While this is the case, it is 
also true that they are very careless, inconsistent, and I 
should in justice to them say, ignorant mothers. In a 
warm day it is no uncommon thing to see a mother wrap 
up her child in a blanket; while, at another time, she 
will leave her child exposed to the cold piercing winds, 
almost in a state of nudity. A New Zealand mother 
can, and often does, pour forth abundantly her pity and 
fondness over her sick and suffering child; but when a 
little active assistance is required, she is by no means so 
ready to exert herself. 
The number of families above stated is 26, the number 
of children 117; the usual method adopted to get 
the number of inhabitants, is to multiply the number of 
fighting men by 3. But in this case, if we add the 26 
men and 26 women in those 26 families to the children, 
it will give us 169: this will enable us to multiply the 
fighting men by 6J. But if we take the number of 
children now alive, and add the 26 women, we shall find 
that we shall hardly be able to multiply the fighting men 
by 3 : considering, however, that the families were young, 
it is quite probable that they may have several more 
children yet, which will, I think, allow us to multiply by 
the figure 3. By adding up the number of the inhabitants 
in the following pages, and by taking the number born 
in the 26 families as a sort of proportion for the whole, 
we shall be able to get pretty near the average number 
of deaths and births. And though this may not be quite 
sure ground to go upon, yet I should think that, by 
taking the average number of births and deaths in tw T o 
whole tribes, we should obtain a very fair proportion 
