Fijians Increasing

Colony’s Vital Statistics

OF scientific interest to all people con cerned with the future life and de velopment of the South Sea natives is the announcement by the Governor of Fiji that the number of Fijian births in 1933 exceeded the number of deaths by over 2,500. Speaking in the Legislative Council recently, he said that the number of births, at 3,393, is the highest recorded for the five-years period 1929-1933. The number of deaths was 1,713, which is the lowest rate per 1,000 during the same period.

This is most interesting because it sug gests that an intelligent race, once it re covers from the “impact” of European culture, may increase in numbers under the sympathetic care of a good Govern ment. Previously, the Maoris, under the clement treatment of New Zealand, were the only indigenous people of Polynesia and Micronesia definitely known to be in creasing in numbers.

During the early nineteenth century the devastating effect of Western civilisation, with its accompanying pestilences of con sumption, influenza, measles, venereal disease, etc., caused the Polynesian races to dwindle rapidly, and they have never since recoverd. Particularly in Hawaii, Tahiti, Cook Islands, and the Marquesas did the diseases of the white man ravage the native populations. The pathetic story of this tragedy is told by Frederick O’Brien in his famous book of the Mar quesas and the Marqesans, “White Shadows in the South Seas.”

Melanesian islands have not been pene trated by white men to such an extent as those of Polynesia, and the majority of Melanesian peoples have not yet been affected by western “culture.”