GREAT CITIES OF THE WORLD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3169, 21 April 1909, Page 7

GREAT CITIES OF THE WORLD.

The population of the great cities of antiquity is not accurately known. Seleucia has been credited with 600,000 inhabitants, Alexandria with 600,000 or 700,000, Rome in reign of Augustus with 800,000, Carthage with 700,000, but these estimates are little better than guesses. We are better informed concerning the population, past and present, of modern cities. With the nineteenth century began a new era, in which cities have developed far more rapidly than every before. In 1801 there were only twenty-two European cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. These cities were London, Dublin, Paris, Marseilles, Lyons, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Naples. Rome, Milan, Venice, Palermo, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Copenhagen and Constantinople. Of these cities only two had more than half-a-million inhabitants, namely. London with 958,000, and Paris with 548,000. Next came Naples with 300,000, and Vienna with 231,000. At the present day Europe [contains 160 cities ,'with more than a 100,000 inhabitants, *55 yWith 250,000, 25 with 500,000, and seven with one millon or more. The population of the 25 largest cities of Europe, according to the latest censuses, is:— London 4,758,000 Paris 2,763,000 Berlin 2,040,000 Vienna * 2,000,000 St. Petersburg 1,429,000 Moscow 1,353,000 Constantinople 1,106,000 Glasgow 848,000 Hamburg 803,000 Warsaw 756.000 Liverpool 746,000 Budapest 732,000 Manchester 643, OuO Naples 585,000 Amsterdam 564,000 Birmingham 553,000 Milan 550,000 Madrid 540,000 Munich 539,000 Barcelona 533,000 Dresden 517,000 Marseilles 517,000 Rome 516,003 Copenhagen 514,000 Leipzig 504,000

America has three cities wiih mere than one million inhabitants, namely: New York, 4,113,000; Chicago, 2,049,000; and Philadelphia with 1,442,000. In Asia, also, there are several cities with populations exceeding one million. Paris, the population of which was estimated at 120,000 in 1220, and 540,000 in 1675' in the reign of Louis XIV., contained 1,053,000 inhabitants in 1851, and 1,794,000 in 1872.