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 (96.
Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii, 1826, p. 298.), and as I have
been informed by Bishop Staley and the Rev. Mr. Coan. Nevertheless,
another apparently trustworthy writer, Mr. Jarves (97. History of the
Sandwich Islands, 1843, p. 93.), 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 (98. This is given in the Rev.
H.T. Cheever s Life in the Sandwich Islands, 1851, p. 277.), the
males of all ages amount to 36,272, and the females to 33,128, or as
109.49 to 100. The males under seventeen years amounted to 10,773, and
287