Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/562

Rh The Kirghiz in the Alai Valley

in the building up of the plains, and we have made some progress in correlating these events.

We have also found full confirmation of the statements as to a progressive desiccation of the region of long standing which has from a remote period continually converted cultivable lands into deserts and buried cities in sand.

We have found widely distributed great and small abandoned sites of human occupation with evidences of great antiquity.

We have reason to think that a correlation of these physical and human events may be obtained through continuance of the investigation, and that archeological excavations will throw light on the origin of Western and Eastern civilizations.

PROPORTION OF CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES

MANY interesting suggestions as to the probable tendency of the birth rate in the United States are offered in a bulletin by Walter F. Willcox entitled "Proportion of Children in the United States," recently published by the Bureau of the Census.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the children under 10 years of age constituted one-third and at the end less than one-fourth of the total population. The decrease in this proportion began as early as the decade 1810 to 1820, and continued uninterruptedly,