d New Zealand tell much the same tale as Canada. A
native population has been almost extinguished in the former and is
swamped in the latter, under the pressure of an immigrant population
of Europeans, which is now twelve times as numerous as the Maories.
The time during which this great change has been effected is less
than that covered by three generations.

To this brief sketch of changes of population in very recent periods,
I might add the wave of Arab admixture that has extended from Egypt
and the northern provinces of Africa into the Soudan, and that of
the yellow races of China, who have already made their industrial
and social influence felt in many distant regions, and who bid fair
hereafter, when certain of their peculiar religious fancies shall
have fallen into decay, to become one of the most effective of the
colonising nations, and who may, as I trust, extrude hereafter the
coarse and lazy Negro from at least the metaliferous regions of
tropical Africa.

It is clear from what has been said, that men of former generations
have exercised enormous influence over the human stock of the
present day, and that the average humanity of the world now and in
future years is and will be very different to what it would have
been if the action of our forefathers had been different. The power
in man of varying the future human stock vests a great responsibility
in the hands of each fresh generation, which has not yet been
recognised at its just importance, nor deliberately employed. It is
foolish to fold the hands and to say that nothing can be done,
inasmuch as social forces and self-interests are too strong to be
resisted. They need not be resisted; they can be guided. It is one
thing to check the course of a huge steam vessel by the shock of a
sudden encounter when she is going at full speed in the wrong
direction, and another to cause her to change her course slowly and
gently by a slight turn of the helm.

Nay, a ship may be made to describe a half circle, and to end by
following a course exactly opposite to the first, without attracting
the notice of the passengers.

POPULATION.

Over-population and its attendant miseries may not improbably become
a more serious subject of consideration than it ever yet has been,
owing to improved sanatation and consequent diminution of the
mortality of children, and to the filling up of the spare places of
the earth which are still void and able to receive the overflo