THE POPULATION OF THE GLOBE.
Where We Live and Who Are Our Associates. THE most trustworthy estimate of the number of people on the earth for the year 1876, as furnished by the German statisticians, is 1,423,917,000. This is an increase of over twenty-seven millions on the estimate of 1875, but the augmentation is not due entirely to the excess of births over deaths, but largely to the obtaining of more accurate information regarding the population of regions hitherto little known, and to more perfect census returns from other countries. Asia is still the home of a majority of the human race, after having supplied shoots from which have sprung great Western peoples. About four-sevenths of the earth’s population is Asiatic, or 825,548,590; Europe comes next with over a fifth, or 309,178,300; Africa, with about a seventh, or 199,921,600; America, with less than a sixteenth, or 85,519,800; and, finally, Australia and Polynesia, with the very small fraction of 4,748,600 people. Europe is the most densely populated, having 82 persons to the square mile; Asia comes next, with 48 to the square mile; Africa next, with 17½; and America and Australia bring up the rear with 5½ and 1½ respectively. There are 215 cities on the earth with a population of over 100,000; 29, of half a million or more, and nine cities containing a million or more inhabitants. Of these last, four are in China. Including Brooklyn with New York, as we may rightfully do for purposes of comparison, the greatest cities of the world stand in this order: London, 3,489,428; Paris, 1,851,792; New York, 1,535,622; Vienna, 1,091,999; Berlin, 1,044,000; Canton and three other Chinese cities, one million each. New York therefore takes its place third in the list of great cities without counting our New Jersey overflow.—Sel.