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 are not large, and as the census was not accurate, uniform results cannot be expected. It should be borne in mind in this and the following cases, that the normal state of every population is an excess of women, at least in all civilised countries, chiefly owing to the greater mortality of the male sex during youth, and partly to accidents of all kinds later in life. In 1858, the native population of New Zealand was estimated as consisting of 31,667 males and 24,303 females of all ages, that is in the ratio of 130.3 males to 100 females. But during this same year, and in certain limited districts, the numbers were ascertained with much care, and the males of all ages were here 753 and the females 616; that is in the ratio of 122.2 males to 100 females. It is more important for us that during this same year of 1858, the non-adult males within the same district were found to be 178, and the non-adult females 142, that is in the ratio of 125.3 to 100. It may be added that in 1844, at which period female infanticide had only lately ceased, the non-adult males in one district were 281, and the non-adult females only 194, that is in the ratio of 144.8 males to 100 females.

In the Sandwich Islands, the males exceed the females in number. Infanticide was formerly practised there to a frightful extent, but was by no means confined to female infants, as is shewn by Mr. Ellis, and as I have been informed by Bishop Staley and the Rev. Mr. Coan. Nevertheless, another apparently trustworthy writer, Mr. Jarves, whose observations apply to the whole archipelago, remarks:—"Numbers of women are to be found, who confess to the murder of from three to six or eight children," and he adds, "females from being considered less useful than males were more often destroyed." From what is known to occur in other parts of the world, this statement is probable; but must be received with much caution. The practice of infanticide ceased about the year 1819, when idolatry was abolished and missionaries settled in the islands. A careful census in 1839 of the adult and taxable men and women in the island of Kauai and in one district of Oahu (Jarves, p. 404), gives 4723 males and 3776 females; that is in the ratio of 125.08 to 100. At the same time the number of males under fourteen years in Kauai and under eighteen in Oahu was 1797, and of females of the same ages 1429; and here we have the ratio of 125.75 males to 100 females.

In a census of all the islands in 1850, the males of all ages