years before the sudden change in the birth-rate of 1877, and continued
to fall till about 1880, but has maintained a fairly uniform standard
since then, rising slightly in fact, the birth-rate, meanwhile,
descending rapidly.




CHAPTER IV.

MEANS ADOPTED.


_Family Responsibility--Natural fertility undiminished.--Voluntary
prevention and physiological knowledge.--New Zealand
experience.--Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.--Practice of
abortion.--Popular sympathy in criminal cases.--Absence of complicating
issues in New Zealand.--Colonial desire for comfort and happiness._


There is a gradually increasing consensus of opinion amongst
statisticians, that the explanation of the decrease in the number of
births is to be found in the desire of married persons to limit the
family they have to rear and educate, and the voluntary practice of
certain checks to conception in order to fulfil this desire.

It is assumed that there is no diminution in the natural fertility of
either sex. There is no evidence to show that sexual desire is not as
powerful and universal as it ever was in the history of the race; nor is
there any evidence to show that the generative elements have lost any of