622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and 2,000 inhabitants, and 209 of between 2,000 and 4,000 inhab- 

 itants each. Of the former class the majority were doubtless 

 largely if not altogether rural communities, as were many of the 

 latter ; and considerable rural population is often included in New 

 England towns with a still greater aggregate number of inhabit- 

 ants. The impossibility of drawing as hard and fast a line be- 

 tween the rural and urban or semi-urban population in New Eng- 

 land as may be done in the other portions of the country is of 

 course due to the fact that while geographically the towns in New 

 England correspond to the towns, townships, election, militia, or 

 magisterial districts, hundreds, wards, precincts, beats, etc., into 

 which the counties in the other parts of the country are divided, 

 it is in New England very unusual to incorporate a village or 

 borough within a town. When separate government is desired 

 by a portion of a New England town, the more common practice 

 is to set off the area asking for it as a new town. It is not pos- 

 sible to determine with mathematical precision the precise increase 

 during the decade of the 3,715 places having each over 1,000 in- 

 habitants in 1890. In a number of instances the territorial limits 

 of cities and towns were not the same in 1890 as in 1880. Usually, 

 of course, when changes have occurred there have been extensions 

 of corporate boundaries. Among the smaller towns and villages 

 there are many whose population in 1880 was not separately re- 

 turned. In some instances the places did not exist in 1880, but 

 more frequently their not being mentioned in the census was due 

 to failure of the enumerators to separate their inhabitants from 

 the persons residing in other portions of their census districts 

 Both the circumstances last mentioned would operate to make the 

 apparent increase in the population of the cities and towns greater 

 than it actually was. On the other hand, many of the larger cities 

 are surrounded by more or less extensive belts of territory outside 

 of their corporate limits, the increase of the population of which 

 belts is due entirely to the growth of the cities around which they 

 lie. On the whole, therefore, it is believed that to compare the 

 population as returned by the eleventh census of cities, towns, 

 and villages of 1,000 inhabitants or upward in 1890 with the popu- 

 lation of the same places as returned in 1880 will afford a practi- 

 cally accurate measure of the rate of growth of the city, town, and 

 village population of the country as a whole. In particular States, 

 however, one or the other of the above causes of error may so pre- 

 dominate as to exert an appreciably disturbing influence on the 

 accuracy of the comparison. In local comparisons, therefore, 

 proper allowance has been made whenever necessary for the opera- 

 tion of these causes. The increase of the rural and urban popula- 

 tion, as above defined, during the decade has been : 



