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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they increased it is hard to say, for between 1803 and the time the 

 census was taken in 1810 a large number of our people moved into 

 the new territory, so that the population of the new territory for 

 1810 gives more than the number we ought to deduct. It is cer- 

 tain we ought to deduct something, and equally certain that we 

 shall never know the exact amount. The best authorities, how- 

 ever, seem to indicate 20,000 as about the proper number. For 

 Florida it is about 12,000, and for Texas, New Mexico, and Cali- 

 fornia, which came to us by the Mexican War, it is about 90,000, 

 to be deducted from the total whites as given by the census of 

 1850. We shall also have to make a deduction from the whites in 

 the census of 1860, because part of the returns for California in 

 the census of 1850 were burned, and the natives of that Common- 

 wealth were not all given in the census of 1850, but appeared in 

 the census of 1860. A deduction of about 70,000 will probably 

 account for all of them. 



The census of 1870 is now generally believed to have been an 

 underestimate, owing principally to the difficulty of obtaining 

 returns from the South so soon after the war. The rate of in- 

 crease for that decade ought therefore to be a little more than 

 23*37, probably about 25*37 ; and this would lower the percentage 

 of the next decade to about 29*05, instead of 31*05. 



Following down the column of native increase, we find that 

 from 1750 the rate remains at a little over 33 per cent for twenty 

 years, until reduced by the Revolution to 28*81. But after the 

 Revolution it returns again to 33*33 in the next decade, then rises 

 to 34*14, and then to 3479. In the next decade, 1810 to 1820, it 

 fails suddenly about one per cent, .and in the next falls one per 

 cent again ; and in the next, which is 1830 to 1840, falls more than 

 two per cent to 30*64, which is much lower than it had been at 

 any time in the previous eighty years, except during the decade 



