Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/420

 404 enter; the general result is, that for the continent we are now given an area of 16,021,078 square miles, which may be slightly increased or diminished according as the boundary between Asia and Europe is drawn. To this if we add the area of all the Asiatic islands (exclusive of the new Siberian islands and Wrangel Land), we reach a total area of 17,179,490, the conclusion being that the area of Asia has hitherto been overestimated by 167,570 square miles. The total area of Asiatic Russia, according to Trognitz's calculation, is 6,510,810 square miles, not including the arctic islands. The total area of Persia is estimated at 635,165 square miles, and the estimate of population, according to Houtum-Schindler's calculation for 1882, 7,653,000, is still repeated. But taking into account that during the last nine years there have been no wars and no famines, nothing to check the natural increase of the population, competent authorities believe that the population of Persia is more likely to be about 9,000,000. Although in the body of the work the detailed population of India is only given for 1881, the authors are able, in the appendix, to give that for 1891.

There is an elaborate discussion on the subject of the population of China proper (the eighteen provinces), which at one time was greatly exaggerated, some authorities making it out to be 500,000,000. After a careful examination of all available data, Drs. Wagner and Supan are inclined to estimate the total population for China proper at only 350,000,000 in round numbers, or about 68,000,000 more than the estimate reached by Sir Richard Temple. Including Mantchuria, Mongolia, Kansu, and Thibet, the total population of the Chinese Empire is given as 361,500,000, living on an area of 4,674,420 square miles. Corea is credited with a population of 10,500,000. The total population of Arabia is reduced by Dr. Wagner to 3,472,000, very different from the estimate of 10,725,000 given by Rashid Bey in 1875. The area assigned to Arabia by Wagner and Supan is 1,153,430 square miles.

As might have been expected, considerable space is devoted to Africa, with the result that the population has been reduced to 164,000,000, whereas a few years ago a common estimate was 220,000,000. Drs. Wagner and Supan evidently consider Ravenstein's estimate of 127,000,000 much too low. They say there have been during the past few years four points of "political crystallization"—the Upper Nile, the Niger, the Congo, and South Africa. Mediterranean Africa has, as a whole, remained passive. Here are problems for the future—the fate of Egypt, the Tripoli question, and the Morocco question. A brief sketch of recent events in the partition of Africa is given, with a useful chronology from 1882 to May, 1891. To Africa south of the equator