Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/418

402 themselves, there has apparently been an increase of population since 1880 of 125,000,000, as a matter of fact the difference between the estimated population of 1880 (1,401,000,000, after deducting the excess credited to China) and that of 1891 (1,480,000,000) is only 79,000,000. This apparent decrease in the rate of growth is really due to the reductions which the editors have felt bound to make on the basis of more careful investigations in the estimates of the population of certain regions. Thus, they have reduced the population of Africa by 38,000,000, while in Asia a deduction of 15,000,000 has been effected. All this shows how conscientiously and critically the editors have gone about their laborious task, and leads us to place the more confidence in the results. Even in Europe there are considerable differences between the areas now accepted and those given in previous issues; the population statistics have been changed throughout.

The following table gives the area and population of the great divisions of the earth's surface according to the latest data:

More recent figures given in the appendix for one or two countries (British India, the Netherlands, etc.) would make no essential difference in the great total. This total is greater by over 12,000,000 than the estimate of Mr. Ravenstein in his recent paper on the Lands of the Globe still Available for European Settlement; but then Mr. Ravenstein reduces the population of Africa by about 30,000,000 below the estimate of Wagner and Supan.

Among European countries Belgium still exceeds all others in density of population; the proportion is 530 persons to a square mile. Belgium is followed by Holland, with 365 to the square mile, and the United Kingdom with 312. If we take England alone we find the density to be close on 480 to the square mile, still considerably below that of Belgium. The density in Scotland is only about one fourth that of England, while that of Ireland is one third. The most thinly populated countries in Europe are Norway and Finland, which have only sixteen people to the square mile. Turkey occupies considerable space in the