E.— GEOGRAPHY 127 



Bay there is an urban population of eight millions. Between two hundred 

 and two hundred and fifty miles to the west, round Osaka Bay and in the 

 valley inland from it to Lake Biwa, is a similar group of towns with a total 

 of some six million inhabitants. The greater population of the Tokyo 

 group is probably due to the fact that it contains the capital of the empire ; 

 for in most other respects the Osaka group, situated by the Inland Sea 

 on the Yamato Lowland and much more central among the populous 

 areas of Japan, has a better location. These great urban concentrations 

 are largely due to the industrialisation of Japan ; and, as very large con- 

 urbations, they are of recent growth. But they have no hinderland 

 comparable to those of the great urban regions already discussed. 



India shows no development of any principal area of grouped conurba- 

 tions akin to those of the other three major populous regions. Its two 

 ' million- cities,' Calcutta (or ' Hughliside ') and Bombay, are far apart. 

 They have developed first as seaports and later as industrial centres ; but 

 neither has any such pre-eminent advantages of geographical position as to 

 become a focus of population comparable to London or New York or 

 Shanghai. And India is still far less urbanised than the other corre- 

 spondingly populous regions. Here the drift to the towns has hardly 

 begun. 



The motive determining all these migrations is, as always, the human 

 desire for better conditions of life. Hence the trend is towards those 

 areas which, in the circumstances of to-day, offer or are believed to offer 

 the best opportunities. The applications of science to agriculture and 

 other formerly rural occupations have diminished the need of these vital 

 industries for large numbers of workers ; and so released a large pro- 

 portion for other occupations. Similar changes have concentrated the 

 workers in other industries into large groups in urban areas. These 

 changes, together with parallel developments in transport, have allowed 

 the social instincts to find freer play — for man is a gregarious animal, and 

 few of us really like to be isolated for any long time — and the results are 

 seen in the growth, at an ever-increasing rate, of the greater conurbations 

 and a corresponding decline in the population of many thinly peopled 

 areas. If these social desires which make for crowding together continue 

 unchanged, and the power to satisfy them continues to increase, the 

 concentration of human beings into urban groups may become almost 

 universal. Even the agricultural workers may dwell in towns and travel 

 daily to and from their place of work over distances as great as those of 

 some suburban journeys of to-day. But the grouping of industries 

 round the great conurbations is more purely, though not entirely, due to 

 economic factors ; and so it is more readily capable of being modified 

 by the action of Governments. The extent to which the growth is a recent 

 fact may be seen if we recall that since 1900 Greater London (of the 

 census) and Greater New York have each doubled their populations ; 

 whilst the Tokyo and Shanghai conurbations, with a later start, have in- 

 creased about fourfold and tenfold respectively in the same period. 



The trend towards urbanisation and concentration seems likely to be 

 strengthened by the further, probable, increase in the productivity of 

 agriculture ; for if the amounts of food, and other agricultural products, 



