their fertilizing and developmental properties and power.

Dr. J.S. Billings in the June number of the _Forum_ for 1893, says that
"the most important factor in the change is the deliberate and
voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing on the part of a
steadily increasing number of married people, who not only prefer to
have but few children, but who know how to obtain their wish."

He further says, "there is no good reason for thinking that there is a
diminished power to produce children in either sex."

M. Arsène Dumont in "Natalite et Democratie" discusses the declining
birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention
of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that
where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance
of the means of prevention.

The birth-rate in none of the civilized countries of the world has
diminished so rapidly as in New Zealand. It was 40.8 in 1880; it was
25.6 in 1900, a loss of 15.2 births per 1000 of the population in 20
years.

There is no known economic cause for this decline. The prosperity of the
Colony has been most marked during these years.

Observation and statistics force upon us the conclusion that voluntary
effort upon the part of married couples to prevent conception is the one
great cause of the low and declining birth-rate. The means adopted are
artificial checks and intermittent sexual restraint, within the marriage
bond, the latter tending to replace the former amongst normal women, as