e? It
needs only a very general review of the conditions of the distribution
of population to realize that the former is probably the true answer.

It will be convenient to make the issue part of a more general
proposition, namely, that _the general distribution of population in a
country must always be directly dependent on transport facilities_. To
illustrate this point roughly we may build up an imaginary simple
community by considering its needs. Over an arable country-side, for
example, inhabited by a people who had attained to a level of
agricultural civilization in which war was no longer constantly
imminent, the population would be diffused primarily by families and
groups in farmsteads. It might, if it were a very simple population, be
almost all so distributed. But even the simplest agriculturists find a
certain convenience in trade. Certain definite points would be
convenient for such local trade and intercourse as the people found
desirable, and here it is that there would arise the germ of a town. At
first it might be no more than an appointed meeting place, a market
square, but an inn and a blacksmith would inevitably follow, an altar,
perhaps, and, if these people had writing, even some sort of school. It
would have to be where water was found, and it would have to be
generally convenient of access to its attendant farmers.

Now, if this meeting place was more than a certain distance from any
particular farm, it would be inconvenient for that farmer to get himself
and his produce there and back, and to do his business in a comfortable
daylight. He would not be able to come and, instead, he would either
have to go to some other nearer centre to trade and gossip with his
neighbours or, failing this, not go at all. Evidently, then, there would
be a maximum distance between such places. This distance in England,
where traffic has been mainly horse traffic for many centuries, seems to
have worked out, according to the gradients and so forth, at from eight
to fifteen miles, and at such distances do we find the country towns,
while the horseless man, the serf, and the labourer and labouring wench
have marked their narrow limits in the distribution of the intervening
villages. If by chance these gathering places have arisen at points
much closer than this maximum, they have come into competition, and one
has finally got the better of the other, so that in England the
distribution is often singularly uniform. Agr