Increased Percentage of the Young. We are apt to think that, as the older type of Maori passes away, so the race is decreasing, and the census increase is not real. There can be no doubt that large villages, populous within the memory of people of fifty years of age, have diminished in size and population. Whilst the decrease has in some cases continued up to the present time, in a majority of cases the increase in the last twenty years has been real. Through individualization of land the communistic village life is being broken up, and settlements have a scattered and sparse appearance as compared with the past. It is only when, the tribes rally to the village meeting-house for some tribal object that a real idea can be formed of the numbers that are scattered on individual holdings. The increase in the number of children is shown by the increased problem of accommodation in Native schools. The following table shows the steady increase that has been taking place in the percentage of children in the whole population:— Table 2:—Maori Population under Fifteen Years. Year. Population. Percentage of Total Population. 1891 14,251 34.1 1896 14,248 35.7 1901 16,082 37.3 1906 18,417 38.6 1911 19,902 40.0 1916 20,536 41.3 1921 21,071 40.0 The Staying of Extinction. In the confusion that followed the clash of two cultures, the Maori of the early nineteenth century was unable to distinguish the good from the evil in the two systems. By adopting European weapons, food, and clothing, and becoming Christianized, he himself voluntarily commenced the disintegration of his own system of culture. No neolithic people could in one or two generations adopt and assimilate European culture in its best features. The Maori was further retarded by the fact that the culture introduced by many of the early trading and whaling vessels was, to say the least of it, not of a high standard. The influence of so many escaped convicts from Australia also retarded the efforts of the early missionaries. With so much to contend against, the Maori had to pay a heavy toll of life, and it is no wonder that the serious reduction in the number of the population should have made people think that the extinction of the race was close at hand. The present increase of the race is due to the gradual elimination of the factors that caused decay. The first great change was the cessation of intertribal warfare with European weapons. The main cause of this cessation was the acceptance of Christianity. Defeated tribes who had subsequently acquired guns and were organizing for the day of vengeance accepted the teaching of peace and good will and laid aside their arms and thoughts of revenge. It must always remain a matter for regret that this peace should have been ruptured between the pakeha and the Maori in the “forties” and the “sixties,” through lack of full appreciation of more pacific ways of dealing with the warlike Maori. More lives were lost, and