The True Law of Population; Shewn to Be Connected with the Food of the People

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1853 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. THE LAW OP INCREASE AND DECREASE, AS EXEMPLIFIED AMONGST NATIONS. The author would now draw attention to the statistical facts as to such nations of the globe as are at all accurately known, with the view of inquiring how these facts bear out the foregoing theory: they will he believes, be found to do so with wonderful accuracy. It will be found, on examination, that such countries as are overpeopled are exclusively agricultural, and dependent upon vegetable food; that, on the contrary, the pastoral countries, where animal food and milk are the support of the people, their numbers are always low. In countries where the two modes prevail, the population is a medium as to number between the two extremes. The cultivation of the vine and olive, and the use of their rich products as ordinary articles of diet, will also always be found to be connected with a somewhat moderate population. Such are the general results which are to be deduced from the following details to which the author now proceeds. The statistics of the Russian empire, including as it does various races of people, living in climates the most clifferent, upon soils the most opposite in quality, and all under one government, foreign to each other as they are in habits, customs, modes of life and language, afford perhaps the most striking and curious exemplification of the effects upon population caused by different modes of living. The immense area of the Russian empire--that is to say, all its Asiatic, and a large portion of its European dominions--is inhabited by a people the most truly pastoral of any existing in the world. Their wealth is cattle. Their exports are the tallow, hides, and horns. Their food is the flesh. Agriculture, as a means of subsistence, is of no value. Their sum...