ing in twenty-five years added as many actual new residents as
Chicago, and twice as many as Philadelphia. Hamburg has gained twice as
many in population since 1875 as Boston; Leipzig has distanced St.
Louis. The same demographic outburst has occurred in the smaller German
cities as well. Beyond the confines of the German Empire, from Norway to
Italy, the same is true.

Contemporaneously with this marvellous growth of urban centers we
observe a progressive depopulation of the rural districts. What is going
on in our New England states, especially in Massachusetts, is entirely
characteristic of large areas in Europe. Take France, for example. The
towns are absorbing even more than the natural increment of country
population; they are drawing off the middle-aged as well as the young.
Thus great areas are being actually depopulated.

A process of selection is at work on a grand scale. The great majority
today who are pouring into the cities are those who, like the emigrants
to the United States in the old days of natural migration, come because
they have the physical equipment and the mental disposition to seek a
betterment of their fortunes away from home. Of course, an appreciable
contingent of such migrant types is composed of the merely discontented,
of the restless, and the adventurous; but, in the main, the best blood
of the land it is which feeds into the arteries of city life.

Another more certain mode of proof is possible for demonstrating that
the population of cities is largely made up either of direct immigrants
from the country or of their immediate descendants. In German cities,
Hansen found that nearly one-half their residents were of direct country
descent. In London it has been shown that over one-third of its
population are immigrants; and in Paris the same is true. For thirty of
the principal cities of Europe it has been calculated that only about
one-fifth of their increase is from the loins of their own people, the
overwhelming majority being of country birth.

The first physical characteristic of urban populations, as compared with
those of country districts, which we have to note, is their tendency
toward that shape of head characteristic of two of our racial types,
Teutonic and Mediterranean respectively. It seems as if for some reason
the broad-headed Alpine race was a distinctly rural type. Thirty years
ago an observer in the ethnically Alpine district of south central
France noted an apprecia