Population Of Ontong Java
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
IT was stated in the last issue of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” that the Administration of the British Solomon Islands had declared the small group of Ontong Java a “closed area”, m order that the Polynesian population that has been established there might be protected against the European diseases which have decimated it.
In the last issue of the well-known anthropological journal “Oceania”, Dr. lan Hogbin says that in November, 1928, he published a compilation which showed that the population then of Ontong Java was 693, being 352 males and 341 females.
He says that in July, 1939, Mr. Geoffrey Kuper, N.M.P., after making a medical patrol in Ontong Java, reported that the population figures were males 308, females 280. total 588. This shows that the population has decreased by a little over 100 in eleven years, or a fall of over lb per cent.