Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be ready with solutions.  Thus I have heard the mortality of the Maoris attributed to their change of residence—­from fortified hill-tops to the low, marshy vicinity of their plantations.  How plausible!  And yet the Marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers multiplied.  Or take opium.  The Marquesas and Hawaii are the two groups the most infected with this vice; the population of the one is the most civilised, that of the other by far the most barbarous, of Polynesians; and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly.  Here is a strong case against opium.  But let us take unchastity, and we shall find the Marquesas and Hawaii figuring again upon another count.  Thus, Samoans are the most chaste of Polynesians, and they are to this day entirely fertile; Marquesans are the most debauched:  we have seen how they are perishing; Hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to be dotted among deserts.  So here is a case stronger still against unchastity; and here also we have a correction to apply.  Whatever the virtues of the Tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste; and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger.  One last example:  syphilis has been plausibly credited with much of the sterility.  But the Samoans are, by all accounts, as fruitful as at first; by some accounts more so; and it is not seriously to be argued that the Samoans have escaped syphilis.

These examples show how dangerous it is to reason from any particular cause, or even from many in a single group.  I have in my eye an able and amiable pamphlet by the Rev. S. E. Bishop:  ’Why are the Hawaiians Dying Out?’ Any one interested in the subject ought to read this tract, which contains real information; and yet Mr. Bishop’s views would have been changed by an acquaintance with other groups.  Samoa is, for the moment, the main and the most instructive exception to the rule.  The people are the most chaste and one of the most temperate of island peoples.  They have never been tried and depressed with any grave pestilence.  Their clothing has scarce been tampered with; at the simple and becoming tabard of the girls, Tartuffe, in many another island, would have cried out; for the cool, healthy, and modest lava-lava or kilt, Tartuffe has managed in many another island to substitute stifling and inconvenient trousers.  Lastly, and perhaps chiefly, so far from their amusements having been curtailed, I think they have been, upon the whole, extended.  The Polynesian falls easily into despondency:  bereavement, disappointment, the fear of novel visitations, the decay or proscription of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life.  The melancholy of the Hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the Marquesas.  In Samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetual