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374 NORTH-IVESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH. librarians, 8. Of the half million males engaged in the cotton manufacture, 367,774 are weavers, 62,044 cotton - cleaners, and 3367 cotton-spinners. Barbers are an important class (172,418), as are also washermen (103,512) and bangle-sellers (26,678). Retailers of alcohol number 10,038; of tobacco, 46,897; of bhang, gánja, or other intoxicants, 3019; of betel, 19,752; and of opium, 522. Bamboo sellers, who supply the lathi, or iron-tipped club, which is the universal weapon of the Provinces, number 78,883. The workers in are returned at over half a million. The beggars and professional mendicants of both sexes amount to 360,078 persons in all. Over 700,000 women are employed in the cotton manufacture. Town and Rural Population.–Of the 105,421 towns and villages in the North - Western Provinces and Oudh, 46,096 contained in 1881 less than two hundred inhabitants; 34,817 between two and five hundred; 16,690 between five hundred and one thousand; 5941 between one and two thousand ; 1099 between two and three thousand; 483 between three and five thousand; 192 between five and ten thousand; 51 between ten and fifteen thousand; 20 between fifteen and twenty thousand; 18 between twenty and fifty thousand; and 14 upwards of fifty thousand. One city has more than two hundred thousand inhabitants (Lucknow); in England there are six. Five have populations ranging from one to two hundred thousand (Benares, Agra, Cawnpur, Allahábád, Bareilly); in England there are seven. Taking the Lieutenant-Governorship as a whole, less than one-tenth (9.7 per cent.) of the whole population may be described as urban or dwelling in towns. The urban population is highest in the Meerut Division (15'57) and lowest (1.57) in Bareilly. Bijnaur District has in particular many flourishing little towns. The average density per acre of persons on a town site varies between 70 and go. The density in London is 71, and Liverpool 94. If the mean density of the whole urban population be taken, and cantonments be omitted, there is a population of 3,639,706 persons living on a town area of 129,261 acres, or a mean density of 28.2 persons to the acre. In England the urban mean density is 6°34 persons to the acre. In mixed European and native towns the density falls low, owing to the space taken up by the compounds or gardens of the Europeans. In Meerut the density is to persons to the acre of town site. Most of the people are gathered into small villages, but as many as 282 towns have a population exceeding 5000. No other part of India contains so large a proportion of celebrated cities, though late changes have transferred Delhi, the most famous of all, to the Punjab. Fourteen towns possess populations exceeding 50,000, namely—(1) LUCKNOW, the capital of Oudh, 261,303 ; (2) BENARES, on the Ganges, one of the most sacred cities of the Hindus, 199,700; (3) AGRA, on the Jumna, once the