that the natives are not dead, but only gone farther inland. This argument in the case of the Maoris in the South Island, is clearly disproved by the fact that it has long been possible there accurately to count every native, no matter how far back they may go. Altogether apart from the mere question of statistics, I am quite positive that this objection in this island is perfectly groundless. Take this island: the natives round this city have almost died out; at the Hutt, but a remnant exists; the pa at Waiwhetu is gone; there are no natives in the Wainui-o-mata valley; or up the Hutt valley. In the Wairarapa many pas have vanished, and but a remnant remains in the others. My own knowledge of Hawke's Bay, extending back about twentyfive years, assures me that recent statistics even do not prove sufficiently clearly the rapidity of extinction. In that short time I know of several populous kaingas quite deserted. I know that formerly, twenty years ago, there were a large number of natives in the district where now but very few exist. All along the east coast, from this spot to Napier, they have greatly dwindled. If we go up the other coast we find the same thing. About twenty years ago there were 300 living at Porirua and near neighbourhood, now there are 53. AtWaikanae some forty years ago there were 500 fighting men besides women and children, now there are only 20. There was a pa at Paikakariki, now one family dwells there. Farther up is Otaki, where the population has greatly dwindled, and so we may go up through Horowhenua, with a fraction of its former population, onwards through the now almost deserted Manawatu and Rangitikei, to Wanganui, and right along the coast to Parihaka and Taranaki. How many warriors could now be put in the field as compared with those who encountered our troops under General Cameron. Clearly the natives have “gone farther back” than Hawke's Bay and Taranaki. If we start at the North Cape and travel downwards from the Three Kings, we have seen by statistics but a fraction of their numbers now exist north of Auckland, and a journey southwards to the Waikato and Thames will reveal the same scantiness of population. Judge Fenton showed us how they decreased in the Waikato in a few years, and all observers admit that the natives are fewer in the centre of this island and about the East Cape than they were twenty years ago. The proof is overwhelming, the natives have not gone farther back—they have died. The Maoris and the weaker Morioris in the Chatham Islands are almost extinct. Bishop Selwyn preached to 1,000; now the entire population, Maoris and Morioris, is 126. Without going into the still disputed question as to which great division of the human family the Malay race belongs, according to the best evidence it seems clear that the Maoris are a part of the race which stretches west