t of any political subdivision of continental Asia; but
Japan, in turn, is surpassed in congestion only by Java, with a density
of 587 to the square mile,[933] which almost equals that of Belgium
(643) and England (600). Great Britain has a density of population (453
to the square mile) only exceeded in continental Europe by that of
Belgium, but surpassed nearly threefold by that of the little Channel
Isles, which amounts to 1254 to the square mile.[934] If the average
density of the United Kingdom is greatly diminished in Ireland, just as
Italy's is in Sardinia and France's in Corsica, this fact is due
primarily to a side-tracked or overshadowed location and adverse
topography, combined with misgovernment.

If we compare countries which are partly insular, partly continental,
the same truth emerges. The kingdom of Greece has fifteen per cent of
its territory in islands. Here again population reaches its greatest
compactness in Corfu and Zante, which are nearly thrice as thickly
inhabited as the rest of Greece.[935] Similarly the islands which
constitute so large a part of Denmark have an average density of 269 to
the square mile as opposed to the 112 of Jutland. The figures rise to
215 to the square mile in the Danish West Indies, but drop low in the
bleak, subarctic insular dependencies of Greenland, Iceland and the
Faroes. Portugal's density is tripled in the Madeiras[936] and doubled
in the Azores,[937] but drops in the badly placed Cape Verde Island,
exposed to tropical heat and the desiccating tradewinds blowing off the
Sahara. Spain's average rises twenty-five per cent. in the Canary
Islands, which she has colonized, and France's nearly doubles in the
French West Indies. The British West Indies, also, with the exception of
the broken coral bank constituting the Bahamas, show a similar
surprising density of population, which in Bermuda and Barbadoes
surpasses that of England, and approximates the teeming human life of
the Channel Isles.

[Sidenote: Density of population in Polynesia.]

This general tendency toward a close packing of the population in the
smaller areas of land comes out just as distinctly in islands inhabited
by natural peoples in the lower stages of development. Despite the
retarded economic methods peculiar to savagery and barbarism, the
Polynesian islands, for instance, often show a density of population
equal to that of Spain and Greece (100 to the square mile) and exceeding
that of European