vania, and thrice that in Illinois. It is more than seven times that of Cuba and nearly twice that of Habana province.

The table puts in a clear light the slight difference between the various departments. Aguadilla has hardly more than twice as many people to a square mile as Guayama. In Cuba, on the contrary, Habana province has over nineteen times as many people to a square mile as Puerto Principe. This remarkable evenness of settlement in Porto Rico extends to the 69 municipal districts, the density of which is shown on the map opposite this page. The least settled district has 58 persons to a square mile, or about the same number as Indiana. The densities of these districts range about 264, the density for the island, and depart from it by an average amount of 106 units, or 40 per cent of that number.

On comparing the preceding table with an earlier one showing the rate of increase in each province during the past twelve years, it will be seen that the two departments, the population of which has been increasing most rapidly, are two of the four in which the density of population is below the mean for the island. This suggests that the evenness of settlement now so conspicuous is not decreasing, but rather the reverse. The table shows also that each department along the northern coast is more thickly settled than is the department immediately south of it, viz, Bayamon than Guayama, Arecibo than Ponce, and Aguadilla than Mayaguez.

URBAN POPULATION.

[See Table IV.]

The people of Porto Rico are, in the main, a rural community. There are no large cities in the island, the largest two being San Juan, which, regarding the entire municipal district as a city, had a population of 32,048, and Ponce, which with its port constituted practically one city, with a population of 27,952. These are the only two cities. exceeding 25,000 inhabitants. The next city in magnitude is Mayaguez, on the west coast, with a population of 15,187. The only other city exceeding 8,000 inhabitants is Arecibo, with a population of 8,008. The total urban population of the island contained in cities exceeding 8,000 inhabitants each was 83,195, or only 8.7 per cent of the population of the island. This is a much smaller proportion than in Cuba, where the corresponding figures are 32.3 per cent, or in the United States, where the corresponding proportion in 1890 was 29.2 per cent. There were in Porto Rico 57 cities, each having a population of 1,000 The total urban population of the island, under this definition, numbered 203,792, or 21.4 per cent of the total number of inhabitants of the island. Similar figures for Cuba show 47.1 per cent of the population of that island to be urban.

or more.

The number of urban inhabitants in each department of Porto Rico, with the proportion it bears to the total population of the department, is shown in the following table:

From the above it is seen that the smallest proportion of urban population was in the department of Arecibo, where it constituted 13 per cent of all the inhabitants. From this it ranged to 29.2 per cent in Bayamon department. The range in the proportion among the different departments was small compared with the corresponding range in Cuba.

CENTER OF POPULATION.

The center of population for Porto Rico has been computed for the inhabitants as distributed in 1899, and the center of area of the island has also been computed. The center of population is the center of gravity of the inhabitants of the country. If Porto Rico were a plane surface without weight and were loaded with its inhabitants distributed as they were in 1899, each inhabitant being supposed to have the same weight, the center of population would be the point about which all parts of the island would balance.

The center of area is similar if we substitute square miles or square yards for population. If the island be conceived as a plane surface of uniform thickness and density, the center of area would be the point about which all parts of it would balance.

The method of computing the centers of population and of area has been described in the reports of the United States Census, and in the report upon the census of Cuba, so that it is unnecessary to repeat it in this connection.

The center of population of Porto Rico was situated at a point 6.6 miles west and 2.4 miles north of the little town of Barros. This point is near the southeastern corner of the municipal district of Ciales, in the department of Arecibo.

The center of area is situated 3 miles north and 2.1 miles west of the town of Barros, and is thus 0.6 mile north and 4.5 miles east of the center of population. It is situated in the southern part of the municipal district of Morovis, in the department of Arecibo. Owing to the inaccuracy of the maps of Porto Rico it is impracticable to express