In Italy

one worker to each 91.4 acres, counting the entire territory. there was one to each 5.07 acres, counting only the productive lands. But as these are there reckoned at more than two thirds of the whole, the comparison stands almost at full force. Including all of Italy, we should find one worker for each plot of eight acres or a little less.

Making all due allowance for primitive methods and smaller individual efficiency, we still see how much more intensive is the care of the lands. And we must not forget that in Lombardy and some other parts of the Mediterranean kingdom, modern methods are gaining ground. Indeed that nearly two thirds of the country is worked as productive soil is in itself significant to one who knows the ruggedness of much of the realm. The stretches of bare Apenine slope seem to be endless, and one is sometimes inclined to say that Italy is fertile only in spots. It has been called a "gray rather than a green country," a designation which must stand true except for idealizing imaginations which require Italy to unroll fields of endless verdure. One must traverse the Val d'Arno, or cross and recross the plains of the Po, find the fertile corners of south Italy and Sicily, and then explore the terraced mountainsides and secluded Apenine valleys, to learn how the little kingdom feeds so many people. If we are reminded that the people are poor and the comforts of life small, we recognize the fact, often sad and depressing, but even here, when considering capacity for population, we remember that Italy has lost by long use of her soils, and by much injury through deforestation, no small measure of her ancient capacity for food production. We, on the other hand, have a virgin country and on the whole our spirit of conservation has arisen in time to save us from fatal losses.

The value of Italian products, as reported, for tillage, animals and forest, is annually about $1,000,000,000. This figure, however, does not include the items of poultry, eggs or vegetables. These, and especially the last, are no doubt far more important relatively than in our own country. The above figure gives a little less than $30 in value for each person in the kingdom. This indeed would seem a starvation figure, but for the vegetables, whose rapid succession of crops and large consumption, must be a large factor in maintaining so great a density.

The comparison turns greatly in our favor when we consider underground resources, and here her paucity makes Italy instructive for population study. Gold and silver are so small as to be negligible, and yet she must acquire her reasonable sum of these metals. Sulphur is far in the lead, but amounts annually to but little more than $7,000,000. Zinc follows with $4,000,000, lead with a little more than one and one half million and all the others fall below the last figure. Iron gives an annual value of $1,371,155, and employs but 1,790 workers. Mineral fuel stands at $838,375, a small fraction of the mineral fuel output of the single state of Iowa. Coal and coke are imported to the extent of about $40,000,000, and boilers and machinery cross the fron

tier to the value of $32,600,000. The total annual mineral output of Italy is about $20,000,000.

When we remember that Italy imports much of her food as well as iron, coal and other things, we are pressed with the question-where does she get her exchange values? Five of her imports pass the hundred million lire mark. These are wheat, raw cotton, coal and coke, boilers and machinery and raw silk. But one export passes this mark, viz., raw silk, rising, however, to nearly 600,000,000 lire. There are, indeed, many exports of smaller value, but these are more than offset by minor imports, so that, as a whole, her imports exceed her exports by nearly 600,000,000 lire, or by about 33 per cent. It is not easy to see how Italy maintains her people. Certain reliefs suggest themselves. It is admitted that many Italians exist rather than live; but this must not be said of Rome or Tuscany or the valley of the Po. We allow something for a genial climate which at once gives quick returns from the soil and reduces the need of clothing and fuel. And we may not forget the great sums brought into Italy by travelers and foreign residents, for the winning of whose money Italian arrangements sometimes seem peculiarly effective. However difficult it is for one not trained in economic studies to see how this thing is done, it is done, and conditions are improving. We are thus warranted in looking to this middle kingdom of the Mediterranean for lessons concerning ourselves.

As has been already intimated, 70.6 per cent. of Italy is registered as productive, the rest being barren or negligible. Let us consider the territory of the United States east of the arid regions. We will (let us hope to be forgiven) eliminate New England, the Appalachian Mountain belt, the Appalachian Plateau, the interior timbered region and the Ozark Hills. The lands thus thrown out as relatively poor contain 28 per cent. of the area under consideration, which it will be seen is not far from the 29.4 per cent. rejected in Italy. And they contain 30,000,000 people, which is not far from the population of Italy. We have left a vast expanse of prairie, alluvial and lacustrine lowland, and of coastal plain. We may at least please our fancy by giving these selected lands the density of Italy. The resulting population is about 334,000,000. Adding the present population of the rejected areas, we have a total east of the arid belt, of 364,000,000. If we allow half the density of Italy for this entire area, we have a total population east of the arid belt, of 230,000,000.

We have just referred to a classification of lands which is comparatively new. For some years physiographers have seen that new categories were needed in the description of continental surfaces. The forms of the land have been taken into account, in respect both to their origin and to their present characteristics. A plain is more than a plain for it may be of a variety of origins and types, with its peculiar phases of structure, relief, soil, climate and vegetation. Similar statements

may be made of plateaux and mountain regions. In the census of 1900, this classification was taken up in a brief and supplementary way, and the area, population and density of the several physiographic regions were computed and are placed before the reader. The areas are not exact, for the boundaries had to be determined by the nearest available county lines, but the error can hardly be of disturbing proportions.

It is not here possible to exhibit or discuss the interesting facts brought out by this new departure of the census. It marks, however, a step of progress in understanding the adjustment of our people to their environment. Under the designation of New England Hills are included New England, the Adirondacks and the foothill country east of the Hudson in the state of New York. The density for this region is the highest in the United States, 124.1. How strongly population turns on other factors than soil, thus appears, and the result becomes astonishing when we put down in comparison the present density of the prairie region, viz., 29.2.

Using the new land classification, we may approach again the possible or probable population east of the great plains, or in the wellwatered eastern section of the United States. Leaving out the New England Hills, which already exceed the density we are about to propose, and omitting the Appalachian Plateau and the Ozark Hills, it would seem reasonable to expect an average density of 100 for the remaining territory of the east. This is about the density of Europe. The territory for which we propose it includes the coastal plains and lowlands, the Appalachian Valley, the piedmont and lake regions, the Mississippi alluvial region, the interior timbered region and the prairies. One need not apologize for thinking this aggregate physically as good as average Europe. Two of the regions, the Appalachian Valley and the piedmont, already have more than three fourths of the density proposed, and the interior timbered region, so far from being the wilderness implied by its name, has a density of 68.7. Raising the whole to 100, we pass from the present 53,800,000 to 127,600,000. If to this total we add the present population of the New England Hills, the Appalachian Plateau and the Ozark Hills, we bring our total to 145,000,000. If we allow reasonably for the growth of these three regions we place the figure at 150,000,000.

A density of 100, however, seems a low expectation for the prairies, and also for the lake region, which last already has 55.2 persons per square mile. Considering the soil, climate, minerals and transportation facilities of the lake borders, their population must largely increase. Give these two regions the present density of France or of Austria-Hungary, we must add to the total already reached, 40,000,000 for the prairies and 15,000,000 for the lakes, bringing our total east of the great plains to 205,000,000.

Iowa is a typical prairie state and has 55,475 square miles, not counting a few hundred miles of water surface. This state has about

two and one fourth million of people, and with the density of France would have more than four times as many, or nearly ten and one half million. Iowa now has 13.39 acres of improved farm land for each one of her population. With the greater density she would have about three acres for each person, while France now has two and one third acres. In general fertility the odds are probably in favor of Iowa.

The mineral output of France is now relatively much greater than that of the prairie state, but it is by no means certain that the ratio would be maintained under full development of the new region, whose building stones, clays and gypsum are but in their commercial beginnings. In that prime necessity, coal, Iowa has quite the advantage, for she mines annually 2 tons for each resident, against ton in France. The latter people imports much fuel, while the vast resources of Iowa for the most part lie still beneath the surface. Not many are probably aware that Iowa has 7,000 square miles of forest, more than at any previous time within the ken of the white man. She has, indeed, nearly as much forest for the proposed ten million people, as France now has for an equal number. It seems reasonable, therefore, to forecast for the prairies an occupation as dense as that of France or Austria.

It would be fatal to the peace of any student to omit the west in such a discussion as this. The writer recently made before the International Geographic Congress at Geneva what seemed to him the moderate and innocent assertion, that the center of our population would always remain some distance east of the geographic center of the United States. He was sharply reminded by a fellow American that such sentiments openly expressed on the Pacific Coast would make him the subject of a lynching excursion. As he is at present at a safe distance he retains his view, but is willing to accept tentatively a generous prophecy for the Cordilleras. Suppose we take seventy-five per cent. of the figure already hazarded for the areas of reclamation, or 60,000,000. And that we may not seem to be dominated by cramped eastern notions, let us concede, since no data are available, that when the arid lands are turned into paradise and a full trade established up and down the Pacific and across its wide waters, that the coast and its cities, the wet belt of the border, the mining centers, mountain valleys and arid pastures will harbor an additional 40,000,000 people. This allows 100,000,000 people west of the prairies, a region that in 1900 had a population of 4,654,818 and a density of 3.5. Here is an increase of twentyone and a half times, a proposal which can hardly be charged with parsimony, and raises our total for the whole country to 305,000,000. If we think the Cordilleran estimate out of bounds, it would yet be easy on the basis of European comparisons to find place for compensating millions in some of the geographic regions east of the Mississippi River.

PEALE'S MUSEUM

BY HAROLD SELLERS COLTON, PH.D.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

N almost neglected chapter in the history of the natural sciences

A in this country is that dealing with Peale's Museum.1 Of the

accounts of the museum that have appeared from time to time, one alone is worthy of consideration, being written from a scientific point of view. The work referred to is by Mr. Witmer Stone2 and considers the ornithological collections alone.

Through the great kindness of Mr. Horace Wells Sellers, access has been had to the diaries, letter books and unpublished autobiography of Charles Willson Peale. With the material thus furnished by Mr. Sellers, to whom the writer is deeply indebted, and much other material from the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the Philadelphia Library, very little of which has been referred to by biographers, many clouds enveloping the history of Peale's Museum have been cleared away. As this history is so intimately connected with the life of the founder, a better beginning can not be made than by reviewing briefly his career.

His life was a long one-eighty-six years. It divides itself very naturally into four periods of about equal length-twenty to twentyfour years: the period of youth, the period of the prime of life, the period of middle age, and the period of old age. The first period. begins with his birth in Queen Anne County, Maryland, April 15, 1741.

His progenitors were English. In the paternal line, they were for several generations rectors of the parish of Edith Weston in Rutlandshire. Charles Peale, his father, although educated in turn for the church at Cambridge, did not take a degree, but came to this country and became headmaster of the Kent County Free School in Maryland. Although the school was popular and patronized by the best families of Kent County, yet he, at times, had great difficulty in making both ends meet; and died when his eldest son Charles Willson Peale was nine years old. His widow, being left with very little to provide for a large family, removed to Annapolis, and, by dressmaking, maintained herself and her children.

1 The official name was "The Philadelphia Museum," but must not be confused with the now existing "Philadelphia Museum," which was founded forty-five years after the former ceased to exist.

Awk, April, 1899, Vol. XVI., pp. 166–177.