Page:EB1911 - Volume 22.djvu/114

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100
POPULONIUM—PORCH

migration to North Africa The greatest drain from Europe, however, has been across the sea to the United States, Canada and Australasia, especially to the first-named. Dr Sundbarg's returns give about 28 millions as the number which left Europe by sea during the 19th century, of whom all but 4 millions emigrated during the last half of that period. Between 1821 and 1904, about 22 millions landed from Europe in the United States; about 21/2 millions in Canada; 2 millions in Australia, besides a good number in Brazil, the Argentine and South Africa. The return of birthplace which usually forms part of the census inquiry, affords supplementary information on the subject of immigration. In Canada, for instance, those born abroad numbered 17 % of the population in 1871, and about 13 % thirty years later. In New South Wales, the corresponding figures were 4I and 28 %, and in Victoria 55 and 27. In New Zealand the consequences of the cessation of special encouragement to emigration were still more marked, the foreign-born declining in proportion from 63 to 33 %. On the other hand, in the United States, from 9.7 % in 18 5o the proportion rose to 13.7 in 1900, and has since reached still higher figures, as has been the case recently in Canada also. Up to the early 'nineties the greater part of the immigrants into America were furnished by Germany, Ireland and Great Britain, but for the next fifteen years the place of those countries was taken by Italy and eastern Europe. The general results of the two movements in Europe have been thus summarised by Dr Sundbarg:—

TABLE IX.
Annual rate per 1000 of population.
1801–1850 1850–1900
Births. Deaths. Births above Deaths. Census Increase. Births. Deaths. Births above Deaths. Census Deaths.
Europe, N.W. 35-4 26-5 8-9 8-1 34-4 23'4 11.0 8-6
" S.W 396 28'3 5'3 5'2 31.4 26.3 5.1 4'3
" E' ' 45°9 381 7'8 7'7 462 347 11.5 10.6
Total Europe 38.6 31-2 7-4 7-1 38-o 28-4 9-6 8-2
United States 299 24.0
Canada 38.7 16.2
Australasia 85.9 48.2

Differences tend to be smoothened out, of course, in dealing with a population so large and varied as that of a continent, but the figures suffice to show- the contrast between the early part of the century and the period following the great migratory movements to the new goldfields, In the countries receiving the stream of newcomers, the intercensal rate of increase was obviously very different from those of the older countries, though it seems to have largely spent itself or been counteracted by other influences. The latest rates, for instance, were only 18 per mille per annum in Australia; II in Canada and IQ in the United States.

Bibliography.—A very full bibliography up to 1899 is appended to von Fircke's Bevölkerungslehre und Bevölkerungspolitik. Reference may also be made to Matthews Duncan, Fecundity, Fertility and Sterility (ed. 1871); Newsholme, Elements of Vital Statistics (ed. 1899), and his paper on birth-rates, Journ. R. Statist. Soc. (1906); W. Farr, Vital Statistics (1885); Coghlan, Report on Decline in Birthrate, New South Wales (1903), and report of Royal Commission on that decline (1904); Bonar, Malthus and his Work (1885); Bertillon, Éléments de démographie; Garnier, Du Principe de population; de Molinari, Ralentissement du mouvement de la population; Bertheau, Essai sur les lois de la population; Starkenburg, Die Bevölkerungs-Wissenschaft; Stieda, Das sexual Verhältniss der Geborenen; Rubin and Westergaard, Statistik der Ehen; Westergaard, Die Lehre von der Martalität und Morbilität, and Die Grundzüge der Theorie der Statistik; Gonnard, L'Emigration européenne.  (J. A. B.) 


POPULONIUM (Etruscan Pupluna), an ancient seaport town of Etruria, Italy, at the north end of the peninsular of Monte Massoncello, at the south end of which is situated the town of Piombino (q.v.). The place, almost the only Etruscan town built directly on the sea, was situated on a lofty hill[1] now crowned by a conspicuous medieval castle and a poor modern village (Populonia). Considerable remains of its town walls, of large irregular, roughly rectangular blocks (the form is that of the natural splitting of the schistose sandstone), still exist, enclosing a circuit of about 11/2 m. The remains existing within them are entirely Roman—a row of vaulted substructions, a water reservoir and a mosaic with representations of fishes. Strabo mentions the existence here of a look-out tower for the shoals of tunny-fish. There are some tombs outside the town, some of which, ranging from the Villanova period (9th century B.C.) to the middle of the 3rd century B.C., were explored in 1908. In one, a large circular tomb, were found three sepulchral couches in stone, carved in imitation of wood, and a fine statuette in bronze of Ajax committing suicide. Close by was found a horse collar with 14 bronze bells. The remains of a temple, devastated in ancient times (possibly by Dionysius of Syracuse in 384 B.C.), were also discovered, with fragments of Attic vases of the 5th century B.C., which had served as ex uotos in it. Coins of the town have also been found in silver and copper. The iron mines of Elba, and the tin and copper of the mainland, were owned and smelted by the people of Populonia; hot springs too lay some 6 m. to the E. (Aquae Populaniae) on the high road—Via Aurelia—along the coast. At this point a road branched off to Saena (Siena). According to Virgil the town sent a contingent to the help of Aeneas, and it furnished Scipio with iron in 205 B.C. It offered considerable resistance to Sulla, who took it by siege; and from this dates its decline, which Strabo, who describes it well (v. 2, 6, p. 223), already notes as beginning, while four centuries later Rutilius describes it as in ruins. The harbour, however continued to be of some importance, and the place was still an episcopal see in the time of Gregory the Great.

See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1883, ii. 212 sqq.); I. Falchi in Notizie degli Scavi (1903–1904); L. A. Milani ibid. (1908), 199 sqq.

PORBANDAR, a native state of India, in the Kathiawar political agency, Bombay, extending along the S.W. coast of the peninsula of Kathiawar. Area, 636 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 82,640, showing a decrease of 4 % in the decade. Estimated gross revenue, £65,000; tribute, £3,233. The chief, whose title is rana, is a Jethwa Rajput. Limestone is largely exported to Bombay. This limestone is used for buildings in Porbandar without mortar, and is said to coalesce into a solid block under the influence of moisture. The town of Porbandar is the maritime terminus of the Kathiawar railway system. Pop. (1901), 24,620. A large trade is conducted in native boats as far as the east coast of Africa.


PORCELAIN, the name of that kind of ceramic ware which is characterized by a translucent body, also loosely used for the finer kinds of ware generally, popularly known as “china” (see Ceramics). The French porcelaine, from which the word comes into English, is an adaptation of the Italian porcellana, a cowrie-shell, the beautifully polished surface of which caused the name to be applied to the ware. The Italian word is generally taken to be from porcella, diminutive of porco, pig, from a supposed resemblance of the shell to a pig's back.


PORCH (through the Fr. porche, from Lat. porticus; the Ital. equivalent is portico, corresponding to the Gr. νάρθηκξ; Ger. Vorhalle), a covered erection forming a shelter to the entrance door of a large building. The earliest known are the two porches of the Tower of the Winds at Athens; there would seem to have been one in front of the entrance door of the villa of Diomede outside the gate at Pompeii; in Rome they were

  1. it commands a fine view, and Corsica is sometimes visible, though not Sardinia, as Strabo (and following him, Lord Macaulay) erroneously state.