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Rh higher degree of culture than they are in possession of at present, or of later years, and that at that time they were both healthy and flourishing; but that both their religious and civil institutions having been decayed, and, particularly in New Zealand, almost annihilated, they were sunken into a very feeble and degraded condition, and that that is the original cause of their decrease. If, therefore, Christianity and civilization had never been brought them by Europeans, they would gradually have vanished by themselves."

But there is no evidence to show that Australians and Tasmanians had a more consolidated and advanced state. The remark of Mr. Wohlers applies only to races having, like the Maories, a civilization of their own, and not to a migratory people. At the same time there is much force in what Mr. J. W. Jackson says, that "there is increasing evidence that these ruder types once occupied a much wider area in the world than they now do. It is also obvious that the day of their approaching extinction is measurable, if not by decades, at least by centuries. We are in many ways on the verge of an ethnic crisis.

Certainly, when we hear the cry of "America for the Americans," and "Italy for the Italians,"—when we observe the heaving of the various dislocated tribes of SclavesSlaves [sic] for union, and when we painfully witness the disappearance of races,—we are conscious of being on the verge of an ethnic crisis.

The death-struggle of ancient peoples is known on all sides of us. In some places they seem, as Humboldt so grandly describes, "the fading remnants of a society sinking amidst storms, overthrown and shattered by overwhelming catastrophes." At other times they appear, as Mr. Markham, the naturalist, speaks of the present Peruvian Indians, "marching slowly down the gloomy and dark road to extinction." A few illustrations from other lands will prepare for the story of the decline of the Tasmanians. Such will sadly demonstrate Mr. Darwin's philosophy that "the varieties of man seem to act upon each other in the same way as different species of animals; the stronger always extirpates the weaker." The coloured races are those which suffer, though there is evidently a vitality in negroes which, to a great extent, defies our power of destruction. Favoured with less sensibility, or endowed with stronger frame, they flourish where others fail, and they increase