great wall, was found by Father Verbeist to be 3000 geométrical paces above the level of the fea. Thus the Tartars, like the Laplanders, are chained to the fhepherdftate, and can never advance to be hufbandmen! If population among them ever become fo confiderable as to require more food than the fhepherd-state can fupply, migration will be their only refource.

In every step of the progrefs, the torrid zone differs. We have no evidence that either the hunter or fhepherd ftate ever existed there: the inhabitants at present subfift on vegetable food; and probably did fo from the beginning. In Manila,one of the Philippine islands, the trees bud, bloffom, and bear fruit, all the year round. The natives, driven from the fea-coaft to the inland parts, have no particular place of abode, but live under the fhelter of trees, which afford them food as: well as habitation; and when the fruit is confumed in one spot, they remove to another. The orange, lemon, and other European trees, bear fruit twice a-year: a fprig planted bears fruit within the year. And this picture of Manila anfwers to numberless places in the torrid zone. The

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Marian or Ladrone iflands are extremely populous; and yet the inhabitants live entirely on fifh, fruits, and roots. roots. The inhabitants of the new Philippine iflands live on cocoa-nuts, falads, roots, and fish. The inland negroes make but one meal aday, which is in the evening. Their diet is plain, confifting moftly of rice, fruits, and roots. The island of Otaheite is healthy, the people tall and well made; and by temperance, vegetables es and fifh being their chief nourishment, they live to a good old age, almost without any ailment. There is no fuch thing known athem as rotten teeth: the very fmell 246 of wine or fpirits is disagreeable;' and they never deal in tobacco nor spiceries. In many places Indian corn is the chief nourishment, which every man plants for himself. The inhabitants of Biledulgerid and the defert of Zaara have but two meals a-day, one in the morning, and one in the evening. Being temperate, and strangers to diseases arifing from luxury, they generally live to a great age. Sixty with them is the prime of life, as thirty is in Europe. An inhabitant of Madagascar will travel two or three days without any

mong

food but a fugar-cane. There is indeed little appetite for animal food in hot climates; tho' beef and fowl have in fmail quantities been introduced to the tables of the great, as articles of luxury. In America are obfervable fome variations from the progrefs; but these are reserved for a feparate sketch (a).

With respect to population, that plenty of food is its chief cause, may be illuftrated by the following computation. The fouthern provinces of China produce two crops of rice in a year, fometimes three; and an acre well cultivated gives food to ten perfons. The peafants go almoft naked; and the better fort wear but a fingle garment made of cotton, of which as much is produced upon an acre as may clothe four or five hundred. Hence the extreme populoufnefs of China and other rice countries. The Caffave root, which ferves the Americans for bread, is produced in fuch plenty, that an acre of it will feed more perfons than fix acres of wheat. It is not then for want of food that America is ill peopled. That Negroland is well peopled

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is paft doubt, confidering the great annual draughts from that country to America, without any apparent diminution of numbers. Instances are not extremely. rare, of 200 children born to one man by his different wives. Food must be in great plenty to enable a man to maintain fo many children. It would require wonderful fkill and labour to make Europe fo populous: an acre and a half of wheat is barely fufficient to maintain a fingle få¬ mily of peafants; and their cloathing requires many acres more. A country where the inhabitants live chiefly by hunting, must be very thin of inhabitants; as 10,000 acres, or double that number, are no more than fufficient for maintaining a single family. If the multiplication of animals depended chiefly on fecundity, wolves would be more numerous than sheep: a great proportion of the latter are deprived of the procreating power, and many more of them are killed than of the former yet we fee every where large flocks of fheep, feldoin a wolf; for what reafon, other than that the former have plenty of food, the latter very little? A wolf resembles a favage who lives by

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hunting,

hunting, and confumes the game of five or fix thousand acres.

Waving the queftion, Whether the human race be the offspring of one pair or of many, it appears the intention of Providence, that the earth fhould be peopled, and population be kept up by the ordinary means of procreation. By thefe means a tribe foon becomes too populous for the. primitive state of hunting and fishing: it may even become too populous for the fhepherd-state; but it cannot easily become too populous for husbandry. In the two former ftates, food must decrease in quantity as confumers increase in number: but agriculture has the fignal property of producing, by industry, food in proportion to the number of confumers. In fact the greateft quantities of corn and of cattle are commonly produced in the most populous diftricts, where each family has its proportion of land. An ancient Roman, fober and industrious, made a fhift to maintain his family on the duct of a few acres *

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pro

The

* Scotland must have been very ill peopled in the days of its fifth James, when at one hunting in the

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high