Abstract
THE sixth issue of Behm and Wagner's “Population of the Earth ” has just been issued. Since the last issue several censuses have been taken, and the results of these, combined with the natural increase of the population, have added something like seventeen millions to the inhabitants of the globe. The population of the earth is now stated to be 1,455,923,550, as compared with 1439 millions two years ago. Europe has 315,929,000 inhabitants, or 32.5 per square kilometre; Asia, 834,707,000, or 18.7 per sq. kil.; Africa, 205,679,000, or 6.9 per sq. kil.; Australia and Polynesia, 4,031,300, or 0.4 per sq. kil.; and the Polar Regions 82,000, mostly divided between Iceland and Greenland. The Bevölkerung is just too soon to be able to utilise the results of the censuses of the United States and of Austria, which are taken this year, and that of our own country will not of course be available for at least two years. The editors have, however, made a very careful calculation of the present population of the States, on the basis of registration and emigration statistics, and find the probable population of the present year to be 48,000,000. The section of the work relating to Roumania and the Balkan Peninsula is specially valuable, and must have cost the editors a vast amount of trouble, considering the untrustworthy and imperfect nature of the data at their command. The areas of these countries, as well as of several other regions on the globe, including Africa, are mainly given from careful planimetrical measurements made under the direction of the editors. The area of Roumania is given as 129,947 square kilometres, and the population as 5,376,000; Servia, 48,657 sq. kil., 1,589,650 population; Montenegro (after the Berlin Treaty),. 9,475 sq. kil., population 286,000; European Turkey, including the dependencies of East Rumelia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, 339,211 sq. kil., population 8,866,500; of Asiatic Turkey the area is given as 1,899,206, and the population 16,320,000. For Afghanistan, the Bevölkerung gives the details of the various tribes and populations contributed to NATURE by Mr. Keane in January last. It also gives Mr. Keane's table of the Turkoman tribes (NATURE, vol. xxi. p. ill), which is wrongly attributed to Prof. Vambery. The statistics of the Indian Archipelago have cost the editors great trouble, mainly owing to the confused and unsystematic way in which the Batavian Government compile their statistics. There is a very detailed and careful resumi of the areas and populations of the various Polynesian island groups. The result reached by the new estimation of the area of Africa in the Bevölkerung is 29,283,390 square kilometres, of which about 61/3 millions are forest and cultivable land, the same are in prairies and light woods, 11/2 million bush, 41/4 millions steppe, 101/2 millions desert, and 170,000 lakes. A new plani-metric measurement of South America made by Dr. Wisotzki gives the area as 17,732,128 square kilometres. The total area of the North Polar lands is given as 1,301,100 square kilometres, and of the South as 666,000.
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Geographical Notes . Nature 22, 467–468 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022467a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022467a0