Captain Beechey says, the women have all learned the art of midwifery; that parturition generally takes place during the night-time; that the duration of labour is seldom longer than five hours, and has not yet in any case proved fatal; but there is no instance of twins, nor of a single miscarriage, except from accident. Infants are generally bathed three times a day in cold water, and are sometimes not weaned for three or four years; but when that does take place, they are fed upon 'popoe,' made of ripe plantains and boiled taro-root rubbed into a paste. Mr. Collie, the surgeon of the _Blossom_, remarks that nothing is more extraordinary, in the history of the island, than the uniform good health of the children; the teething is easily got over, they have no bowel complaints, and are exempt from those contagious diseases which affect children in large communities. He offered to vaccinate the children as well as all the grown persons; but they deemed the risk of infection of small-pox to be too small to render that operation necessary. As a proof how very much simple diet and constant exercise tend to the healthful state of the body, the skin of these people, though in such robust health, compared with that of the Europeans, always felt cold, and their pulses always considerably lower. The doctor examined several of them: in the forenoon he found George Young's only sixty; three others, in the afternoon, after dinner, were sixty-eight, seventy-two, and seventy-six, while those of the officers who stood the heat of the climate best were above eighty.