304 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Their union, encouraged by the mother country, has entered upon the stage of official preparation since the conference in Hobart Town in January 1895. The areas of the five continental colonies vary accord- ing to their historical age, just as was the case in North America. The most recent, West Australia, Queensland, and the North Territory, embrace almost three times the area of the three older ones. The small size of Victoria and New South Wales has a close connection with their position in the southeast, the only narrow and richly articulated por- tion of Australia ; that of the other two divisions lies in their character as islands.
Africa is at present undergoing a process of political transposition which is involving almost all its territories, so that it is scarcely possible to give even an approximate figure for the size of a single one of these. Evident enough is the fact,, however, that the seven largest areas all belong to non-African powers, and that the list of native territories begins with no larger country than Morocco, which can count merely as a medium state. The Congo State, rooted in the largest river-basin of Africa, is relatively the most defined of the greater territories, although the latest formed. The absence of a state in Africa of decid- edly predominating extent is due to the division of the larger half of the continent among eight foreign powers, to the lack of a native great power after the manner of China, and moreover, to the want of all political possibilities in the desert, which takes up one-fourth of the continent and that in the part most advanced in political respects.
In the Western Hemisphere, where North, Central, and South America (exclusive of the polar regions) stand in the proportion of 52: 2: 46, an entirely different allotment of land rules in the north from that in the south ; and Central America, too, together with the West Indies, presents a peculiar distribution of its territory. North America is practically divided between the United States and the Dominion of Canada. Mexico, which is less than one-fourth the size of the United States, comes in here as a country of essentially South American pro- portions. In the limited area of Central America, on the other hand, we find a piecemeal division such as occurs nowhere else but in Europe. It is split up into seven independent states and twelve different colo- nies. The largest of these, Guatemala (48,700 square miles) is smaller than the smallest South American state, Uruguay (69,000 square miles), and the average size scarcely exceeds that of the Duchy of Brunswick. Almost half (47 per cent.) of South America is taken up by Brazil,
