498 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—E. 
270,000 inhabitants according to the census of 1920. The object of this 
paper is to examine the distribution of population in relation to the physical 
and economic geography of the island. Mallorca can be divided by its 
relief into four regions. The principal feature of the relief is a range of 
mountains, 45 miles long and about 10 miles broad, which form the north- 
western part of the island and rise in places to heights of nearly 5,000 ft. 
The south-east of the island contains a range of hills of much lower general 
altitude than the northern mountains, the maximum height being only 
1,500 feet. ‘These two regions are separated by a wide central plain, whose 
general level is interrupted by a fourth region, the isolated mass of Randa. 
The four major regions can be subdivided on the basis of the natural and 
cultivated vegetation. The whole of the central plain is cultivated and 
forms a vast orchard of fruit trees, principally almonds. The climate 
makes irrigation essential, by wells on the plain and by tanks in. the 
mountains. 
Palma is the principal settlement and with its suburbs contains nearly 
one-third of the population of the island. With the exception of Palma 
there are no large coastal settlements. ‘The area of greatest density of 
population occurs along the southern foot of the northern mountains. 
A marked feature of the distribution of population in the central plain is 
the absence of hamlets and villages, as population is concentrated in small 
towns containing 1,500 or more inhabitants. The population is, however, 
more dispersed than it was a hundred years ago. 
Prof. C. DaryLtt Forpe.—Variations in the native economy of arid 
regions (3.45). 
A comparative review of the native economies of the arid regions of the 
world shows clearly that the general climatic conditions are of less signi- 
ficance than (a) particular physiographic and biological conditions, and 
(6) the cultural history of the larger areas of which these desert regions 
form a part. Climatic divisions into ‘ hot’ and ‘ continental’ deserts and 
gradations from winter to summer precipitation appear to be largely 
irrelevant to the classification of native economies. 
Areas climatically and vegetationally closely similar exhibit fundamental 
contrasts. | Even at the lowest economic levels the peculiar features of a 
particular habitat are all-important. ‘The Coahuilla of the Mohave Desert 
and the Bushmen of S.W. Africa are the one almost entirely collectors of 
wild fruits and the other dominantly hunters. This differentiation is not 
dependent on divergence of general physical conditions but on the sharp 
contrasts in the relative abundance of particular forms of plant and 
animal life. 
Every type of economy is represented in arid areas, and the introduction of 
various domestic animals and types of agriculture has profoundly modified 
the distribution and density of settlement and the seasonal rhythms of 
activity and settlement. Food-gathering economies have long been largely 
extinguished in the Old World deserts of the northern hemisphere, and 
comparisons of the Badawin and Saharan Berber economies on the one 
hand with those of the Bushman and Aranda on the other, and of the Kazak 
economy in southern Turkestan with that of the Paiute of the Great Basin, 
bring out some of the profound consequences of pastoralism and access to 
marginal settlements of higher culture. The penetration of higher economies 
is often partial and is sometimes delayed by cultural factors. Maize culti- 
vation under conditions of natural flooding has been practised for more 
than a millennium in parts of the arid region of south-western U.S.A. and 
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