The Times published on Wednesday an abstract of an account
of the population of the world annually prepared by Drs. Behm and Wagner, and published by Perthes, from which it appears that the population in 1876 may be taken at 1,423,917,000, of whom nearly one-fifth, or 309,178,000, reside in Europe, and probably 400,000,000, or less than one-third, belong to the European civilisation. Four-sevenths of the world's people, or 824,000,000, reside in Asia, and half of these are Chinese. The population of America, natives included, in both divisions of the continent, is only 85,000,000, of whom we imagine about half are of pure-blooded European descent. The population of Africa, arrived at, of course, by more or less careful guessing, is set down at 199,900,000, of whom scarcely 1 per cent, can be fairly set down as civilised men, and little more than 10 per cent. as semi-civilised. The Turkish Empire is estimated at 46,000,000, including 20,000,000 in Egypt and its dependencies, with Tunis and Tripoli ; but the population in Europe is only 8,000,000, and in Asia 13.500,000. Half the European population of Turkey at least is Bulgarian, and if we add the Greeks and Slays, we shall find that the dominant caste does not exceed one-fourth of the whole, to whom the other three-fourths are sacrificed.
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