Nature‘s work in New Zealand is not the same as that which she is quickly doing in North America, in Tasmania, in Queensland. It is not merely that a hunting and fighting people is being replaced by an agricultural and pastoral people, and must farm or die: the Maori does farm; Maori chiefs own villages, build houses, which they let to European settlers; we have here Maori sheep-farmers, Maori ship-owners, Maori mechanics, Maori soldiers, Maori rough-riders, Maori sailors, and even Maori traders. There is nothing which the average Englishman can do which the average Maori cannot be taught to do as cheaply and as well. Nevertheless, the race dies out. The Red Indian dies because he cannot farm; the Maori farms, and dies. There are certain special features about this advance of the birds, beasts, and men of Western civilization. When the first white man landed in New Zealand, all the native quadrupeds save one, and nearly all the birds and river-fishes, were extinct, though we have their bones, and traditions of their existence. The Maories themselves were dying out. The moa and dinoris were both gone; there were few insects, and no reptiles. “The birds die because the Maories, their companions, die,” is the native saying. Yet the climate is singularly good, and food for beast and bird so plentiful that Captain Cook‘s pigs have planted colonies of “wild boars” in every part of the islands, and English pheasants have no sooner been imported than they have commenced to swarm in every jungle. Even the Pakéha flea has come over in the ships, and wonderfully has he thriven. The terrible want of food for men that formerly characterized New Zealand has had its effects upon the habits of the Maori race. Australia has no native fruit trees worthy cultivation, although in the whole world there is no such climate and soil for fruits; still, Australia has kangaroos and other quadrupeds. The Ladrones were destitute of quadrupeds, and of birds, except the turtle-dove; but in the warm damp climate fruits grew, sufficient to support in comfort a dense population. In New Zealand the windy cold of the winters causes a need for something of a tougher fiber than the banana or the fern-root. There being no native beasts, the want was supplied by human flesh, and war, furnishing at once food and the excitement which the chase supplies to peoples that have animals to hunt, became the occupation of the Maories. Hence in some degree the depopulation of the land; but other causes exist, by the side of which cannibalism is as nothing.