1668 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 



Eastern Hemisphere. Australia, and the scattered 

 islands of the Pacific Ocean, are the least populous 

 portions of the earth, the total present number of 

 their inhabitants amounting to a mere fraction of the 

 entire number.* 



The numerical distribution of mankind undergoes 

 great change in the present day, when emigration 

 from over-populated lands to distant parts of the 

 globe is conducted on so extensive a scale. But this 

 affects the distribution of race in much higher meas- 

 ure than it does the merely numerical distribution of 

 man. The fast-increasing numbers of the settlers in 

 the fertile plains and river valleys of the New World, 

 descendants of European colonists, perhaps hardly 

 more than replaces, numerically, the native races 

 who occupied the same regions prior to the first visit 

 of the white man to their shores. It is the tendency, 

 everywhere, of the native races to decay before the 

 white settler. Wars, famine, epidemic diseases, and 

 various social causes, again, tend to keep down the 

 total number of the human family at any rate, to 



* The figures given in the above table represent no more than 

 an approximate estimate. It is only in the case of Europe that 

 we possess the means of making such calculations with any 

 approach to accuracy. The amount of the population of China 

 alone has been stated with wide variations the estimates rang- 

 ing between two hundred millions and more than double that 

 number. We adopt above the higher number, which appears to 

 be confirmed by the general testimony of observers. The num- 

 ber of inhabitants within the African continent (and espe- 

 cially within those portions of it populated by the negro race) 

 is scarcely more than a guess: the figures given above are 

 probably rather below than in excess of the truth. 



