Of 116 families of natives of different villages, there were 321 children, of whom 163 survive, and 158 are dead.

VITALITY OF INBRED CHILDREN

The concubitants with an average surviving family of 1·74 show, therefore, not only a higher birth-rate, but far the highest vitality of offspring.

The relations other than concubitants show, it is true, the highest fecundity next to the concubitants, but their rate of vitality is the lowest of the four classes, since more of their children have died than are now living.

Second in point of vitality come the fellow-villagers, but they are far behind the concubitants.

From our preconceived ideas of the advantages of out-breeding we should expect to find that the offspring of natives of different villages would have shown, if not the highest fecundity, at least the highest vitality, for this is the class in which the parents are not related. On the contrary, we find that the families of these unrelated people are only third in point of vitality.

In view of the unfavourable position which the "relations other than concubitants" hold in this analysis, it is well to divide the group into two sub-classes. Of the fifty-five families of "relations," thirty-three are stated to be kawa vata (i.e. of the same stock, but not necessarily of the same family or generation). The remaining twenty-two families, on the other hand, consist of such unions (incestuous from the Fijian point of view) of vei-nganeni or vei-tathini, that is to say, brother and sister, or cousins not concubitant; vei-vungoni,

uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew; vei-tamani, father and daughter, or paternal uncle and niece; and vei-luveni or vei-tinani, maternal aunt and nephew, or mother and son. We have therefore, for purposes of identification, divided the group into—first, relations distant; second, relations specified.

Divisions. Number of Families. Children of the Marriage.
Alive. Dead. Total.
Relations (distant) 33 49 61 110
Average per family -- 1·48 1·85 3·33
Relations (specified) 22 23 35 58
Average per family -- 1·05 1·59 2·64
Total 55 72 96 168
Average per family 1·31 1·75 3·6