has been a seat of huge kingdoms and empires. The valley of the 

 Helmimd in Afghanistan, we are told by a recent traveller, is 

 " strewn with the relics of deai kingdoms." Along the valleys in 

 China, among the sands of Gobi, and in the forests of India, 

 unnumbered ruins and gigantic structures tell us of vanished 

 peoples. And the Euphrates and Tigris valleys are still yielding 

 their testimony to the existence under the old Assyrian and Baby- 

 lonian empires of a magnificent system of " intensive cultivation," 

 as it has been well called, which supplied the wants of huge 

 multitudes of people. The ruins in Asia Minor tell the same tale. 

 Look at that part of the world, and you would say population has 

 wonderfully decreased ; look at modern Europe, and it appears to 

 have increased ; the simple fact being fluctuation, here atone time, 

 there at another. 



What of Africa ? In the palmy days of Carthage 300 Lybian 

 cities paid her tribute ; how many " cities " are there now ? When 

 Agathocles, king of Syracuse, invaded that part of northern Africa 

 in the 3rd century B.C. " the whole country lay like a ga.rdeu 

 before him, covered with wealthy towns and the luxurious villas of 

 the Carthaginian merchants. Two hundred towns or more 

 surrendered." Some further idea of the geometrical increase of 

 North Africa is afforded by Gibbon, who tells us that 500 episcopal 

 churches {i.e bishops' sees with all their surroundings) were over- 

 turned by the hostile fury of the Donatists, the Vandals and the 

 Moors. But how has the Malthusian Theory worked since then ? 

 Where are those peoples now ? 



If we turn to the New World the records are necessarily nearly all 

 prehistoric ; but undoubtedly Mexico and Peru were, when invaded, 

 the seats not only of higher civilisations than at present, but of at 

 least as thick populations as now, if not much thicker. And the 

 earth mounds in the United States, the cliff habitatations in the 

 Rocky Mountains, the arcnitectural ruins in Central America, tell 

 us yet again of former centres of life and activity. 



No ; the earth is little if at all more crowded now than then, as 

 far back as we can trace. There is nothing; to back up the geomet- 

 rical ratio ; at any rate nothing which advances it beyond a 

 " tendency/' which can no more be realised than the asymptote can 

 touch its curve. 



What then are we to think of the following emphatic statement 

 of Grant Allen ? — " The world is perpetually over populated. It is 

 not, as many good people fearfully imagine, on a half comprehension 

 of the Malthusian principle shortly going to be over-populated ; it 

 is now, it has always been, and it always will be, pressed close up 

 to the utmost possible limit of population." With reference to 

 man, I have proved that this cannot be true, and what I have to 



