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persisting Samoan family customs, continues to be very high by western standards, while the death-rate has been lowered through health work and other factors to a low figure. At the time of the 1945 census 45-8 per cent, of the population was under fifteen years of age, an extraordinarily high proportion, which opens the way to a continuing rapid increase at least for the next generation or two as these children enter the reproductive age-levels. If present trends continue without setbacks such as serious epidemics, the Samoan population may well double within twenty years, bringing the total to about 150,000. This is comparable to the situation in American Samoa, with a present population of about 18,000 Samoans now increasing at approximately the same rate. 7. The full (white) European population has decreased considerably in the last two decades. Apart from the official and missionary groups and employees of the New Zealand Reparation Estates, there are only about 75 white residents in the Territory. Almost no new immigration has taken place in recent years, and most of these older settlers are married to persons of Samoan ancestry. By to-day over 93 per cent, of the group holding European status are local-born part-Samoans. This group has been increasing faster even than the Samoans, and a majority of them are at the pre-productive age levels, presaging further rapid increase. 8. The categories " Samoan " and " European," which once had a racial basis, have by now a legal status which does not have strict reference either to type of ancestry or to ways of living. The two groups are differentiated importantly as regards their legal rights and limitations, as in political representation, land holding, schooling, and Court procedures. But the Samoan group contains, in addition to full Samoans, a numerous though statistically uncounted element of mixed white or Asiatic descent, and also persons of other island ancestry. Since 1934, too, a legal procedure has existed by which part-Samoans of European status who are of half or more Samoan blood may be granted Samoan status. A reverse procedure has existed even longer, in fact from German times, by which persons of Samoan status who are of partEuropean ancestry may be granted European status. Other partSamoans hold European status as being the legitimate descendants in the male line of European fathers by legal marriages. Still others have obtained this status by a law of 1944, which declared to be Europeans all persons not already considered as Samoans, and not having male ancestors in the male line with more than three-quarters Polynesian blood. By this law a large number of persons of Asiatic-Samoan ancestry, descendants of Chinese fathers, became Europeans, so that about 15 per cent, of the Europeans in the Territory are not of white ancestry at all. 9. This legal dichotomy between the Samoan and European residents, so obviously by now an artificial distinction, has created serious problems, especially for many of the part-Samoans, and is an increasing source of strain in the Territory. It is resented greatly by the Samoans, especially to the degree that it involves social and other discrimination. Persistence in the European group of a sense of superiority probably accounts largely for the fact that while up to the 31 March, 1947, 541 part-Samoans in the Samoan group have petitioned for and have been granted European status, only 27 of those in the European group have correspondingly become Samoans, and of these latter, 3 have in turn repetitioned and become Europeans again recently.