The earth and its inhabitants The earth and its inhabitants .. earthitsinhabita386recl Year: 1883 CHAPTER IV. STATISTICS OF BELGIUM. Population. EVEPtAL Belgian towns Lave lost in population in the course of tlie last three centuries, and the Ardennes are able to support only few- inhabitants ; yet amongst the states of Europe Belgium is the most thickly peopled. If the whole globe were inhabited as densely, its population would number 25 milliards, or about seventeen times more individuals than now. Taking the number of men capable of bearing arras as a base for our computa- tion, it will be
The earth and its inhabitants The earth and its inhabitants .. earthitsinhabita386recl Year: 1883 CHAPTER IV. STATISTICS OF BELGIUM. Population. EVEPtAL Belgian towns Lave lost in population in the course of tlie last three centuries, and the Ardennes are able to support only few- inhabitants ; yet amongst the states of Europe Belgium is the most thickly peopled. If the whole globe were inhabited as densely, its population would number 25 milliards, or about seventeen times more individuals than now. Taking the number of men capable of bearing arras as a base for our computa- tion, it will be found that the territory which has now become Belgium contained nearly 500,000 inhabitants when CÅsar invaded it and reduced it to a howling wilderness. Since that time there have been many oscillations, brought about by war, famine, and pestilence. Ever since the creation of the existing kingdom the population has been increasing, except in the year 1847, when typhus carried off thousands in Flanders, and the deaths throughout the kingdom exceeded the births. The increase of population is due almost entirely to an excess of births over deaths, for the number of foreigners residing in the country is small.* The struggle for existence is a sore one in the towns, and foreigners do not care to participate in it. Rather does it happen that Belgians go abroad to improve their condition. Upon the whole, however, they are a sedentary people, and more than a third of them die in the parish in which they were This is all the more curious as the towns exercise the same attraction upon the rural population of Belgium as in other countries. Even now the towns contain about a fourth of the total population, and they increase at a rapid rate, whilst the purely agricul- tural districts are stationary, or even retrograde.+ The hygienic conditions are favourable to life in Belgium, the mean age attained being forty or forty-one years, whilst individuals who survive the * In 186G there
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