Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/185

 POPULATION.

H9

Population.

The kingdom is divided into four Kreise, or circles, of the follow- ing area and population, according to the Zollverein enumerations of December 3, 1864, and of December 3, 1867 : —

Circles

Area in sq. m.

Population

1864

1867

Dresden ..... Leipzig ..... Zwickau ..... Bautzen. ...

Total.

1,674

1,342

1,790

971

615,169 532,689 316,886 879,250

638,916 553,583 322,562

908.525

6,777

2,343,994

2.423,586

■

The increase of population during the three years 1865-67 was at the rate of four per cent in the towns, but of only one per cent, in the rural districts of the kingdom. The population of 1867 com- prised 1,186,889 men, and 1,236,637 women, being at the rate of 1,012 women to 1,000 men. In the midst of the purely Germanic population there lived, at the last census, 51,895 Slavonic Wends, mainly in the circle of Bautzen.

The population of the chief towas, according to the census of December 1867, was as follows • —

Dresden 156,024

Leipzig 90,824

Chemnitz 58,573

Zwickau 24,509

The population of Leipzig is vastly increased during the period of the great annual fairs, notably that of Easter, which bring together merchants from all parts of the civilised world. According to official returns the value of the commercial transactions at these fairs, established for nearly six centuries, has in recent years averaged 60 millions of thaler, or about 9 millions sterling. Leipzig is also the centre of the German, and to some extent European, trade in productions of the printing press.