to furnish the necessary material. Over two hundred of the
largest were given all the opportunities for representation that could
be asked for, and, as a consequence, nearly every community in the land
containing more than ten thousand inhabitants has a more or less full
account. Each one of these is prefaced by a small outline plan, on which
is marked the direction in which the surrounding cities lie, and the
distance to each. Accompanying this plan are tables of the population at
different decades, and of the sex, color, and nativity of the present
population. Then comes an historical sketch, and then an account of the
present condition of the community. This last describes the location and
topography fully; gives the principal features of the country
immediately tributary; details the facilities for communication given by
railroads and by water; gives statistics about the climate; describes
the public buildings and public works, including water and gas works;
gives figures about the streets, horse railroads, and markets; touches
upon the places and methods of amusement, and the parks and
pleasure-grounds; the sewers, the cemeteries, sanitary organization
(boards of health), and the system, or lack of system, of municipal
cleansing,--all receive especially full treatment, as would naturally be
expected when a sanitary engineer of Colonel Waring's stamp had charge
of the work; the police department gets its share of the space; and in
some cases the schools, fire department, and commerce are represented.
The material from which these accounts were compiled was, in the main,
obtained by sending schedules of questions to the various town and city
officials; in the case of some of the largest cities the material was
secured by special agents, but in general, the desire of the cities to
be represented was considered sufficient guaranty that the schedule
would be filled out fully and accurately, and this generally proved to
be the case.

The historical sketches of the smaller cities and towns were compiled
from information obtained in the same way, and from gazetteers,
encyclopaedias, town and city histories, and all other sources available
at the headquarters of the bureau. To the preparation of the sketches of
the twenty largest cities, especial attention was devoted, and the
results have been correspondingly valuable. Perhaps the most important,
both from the historical and literary point of view, will be the sketch
of t