And here let us quote Malthus’ own words,—“It is not that the American tribes have never increased sufficiently to render the pastoral or agricultural state necessary to them; but, from some cause or other, they have not adopted in any great degree these more plentiful modes of procuring subsistence, and therefore cannot have increased so as to become populous. If hunger alone could have prompted the savage tribes of America to such a change in their habits, I do not conceive that there would have been a single nation of hunters and fishers remaining; but, it is evident, that some fortunate train of circumstances, in addition to this stimulus, is necessary for the purpose.” In chapter v., our author gives a curious account of how population was checked in the islands of the South Seas. It is among such islands as these (and, indeed, the British islands in ancient times resembled them greatly), that we trace the origin of many of the singular institutions destined to retard the rapid increase of mankind—cannibalism, late marriages, the consecration of virginity, and ferocious punishments against such women as reproduce the species at too early an age. Captain Cook found such a constant state of warfare existing among the various tribes in New Zealand, that each village in its turn applied to him to assist them in destroying the others. In his third voyage he adds that warlike ferocity is so constant “that one hardly ever finds a New Zealander off his guard, either by night or day.” In Otaheite and the Society Islands, again, where the size of the islands was too small, and the knowledge of navigation acquired by the islanders too scanty to make it possible for population to increase rapidly, all sorts of sufferings were seen among the poorer classes of the people; the richer classes, however, seemed, according to Captain Cook, to check their own increase by having recourse to the fearful practice of infanticide, to an enormous and unparalleled extent. Even with these checks, however, population, in the South Sea Islands, occasionally pressed so hard on subsistence that animal food became very scarce in certain seasons, and such destructive wars ensued that Captain Vancouver, on visiting Otaheite, in 1777, and again in 1791, found that most of his friends of 1777 were dead, having been killed in the wars. Prostitution, and destruction of female infants, were extremely common in Otaheite in Captain Cook’s time.