From such occupations he was soon called to a Frofessorship of Natural Science in Dickinson College, and after a brief tenure of this position left it in July, 1850, to accept the Assistant Secretaryship of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, with which his name and work were thenceforth identified. In May, 1878, after the death of Professor Henry, he was elected by unanimous vote of the Regents, Secretary of the Institution, and in this office he continued till his death.

Latterly much of his time was absorbed in the duties of U. S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, a position to which he was appointed by President Grant in 1871.

In summarizing his qualifications as an officer of the Smithsonian, his lifelong friend, Professor Dana, emphasizes justly his breadth of knowledge in the sciences of nature, his sympathy with other workers over the land, his indefinite powers of work, his systematic methods, and his eagerness to make the Institution national in the highest sense of the term, and also scientifically and practically useful." Along with the multiform activity imposed by these standards were his unsalaried services as Commissioner of Fisheries, devoted especially to the philanthropic purpose of enlarging that valuable section of the food-supply of the world.

His personal contributions to the literature of science were voluminous and important,-the most elaborate being his account of the Birds of North America, prepared in conjunction with Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence in 1858, and his more complete History of North American Birds, issued in 1874, with the assistance of Messrs. Brewer and Ridgway. His original work in the description of North American mammals and reptiles was also of signal value; and his numerous official Reports abounded in original matter of the first quality. From 1870 to 1878, he was the scientific editor of the periodicals issued by the Harpers of New York,

1 Amer. Journal of Science, Oct. 1887, 320.

as also of their Annual Record of Science and Industry, and used the opportunity to bring out a vast amount of instructive, critical work.

Professor Baird's scientific eminence was recognized by many foreign societies, which enrolled him in their ranks. His membership in this Society dates from April, 1880.

His manifold and responsible public labors, with unremitting private studies, undermined his health. When he went in June, 1887, to Woods Holl, Massachusetts, the chief summer-station of the U. S. Fish Commission, he was evidently much broken: and his death occurred there, on August 19th, in the 65th year of his age.

He married Mary, daughter of Inspector-General Sylvester Churchill, of the U. S. Army, who survives him with one daughter.

For the Council,

FRANKLIN B. DEXTER.

3

ESTIMATES OF POPULATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES.

BY FRANKLIN B. DEXTER.

IN accordance with custom the member of the Council to whom is entrusted the duty of formulating their Report is permitted to present therewith a discussion of some subject of general historical interest, for which he is more directly responsible. The present writer offers, therefore, some observations on the Estimates of Population in the American Colonies.

I am not aware that any attempt has been made to discuss in a connected way the scattered estimates of the numbers of inhabitants from time to time in the several colonies which afterwards became the United States of America. The materials at command are so meagre as to discourage inquiry, but a conviction that a beginning should be made in the arrangement of the data we have, and a hope of opening the way for useful deductions, have moved me to offer this study.

Certain elements of difficulty are inseparable from the attempt. In America, under the colonial regime, there was but little systematic collection by authority of trustworthy population-statistics. For long periods, in most of the colonies, there was an utter dearth of even the pretence of knowledge; while such estimates as we have, there is reason to suspect, are often intentionally misleading, when officials, on the one hand of the boastful, or on the other hand of the timid type, thought to serve some interest by exaggeration or by understatement. In many of the returns,

moreover, there is a failure to specify whether certain classes of the community, as negroes and Indians, are included; often, however, such uncertainty vanishes by an inspection of the figures. Other elements of vagueness and of perplexity will suggest themselves, as we consider the field in detail.

Taking the colonies in the usual geographical order, the first is the Province of New Hampshire, in which there are no peculiarities or extraordinary variations to be noted, but a tolerably uniform though slow rate of increase.

The separate history of the district is merged from 1641 of 1679 in that of Massachusetts Bay; and for the earliest period, that prior to the protectorate of Massachusetts, our associate, Col. Albert H. Hoyt, in a paper contributed to our Proceedings,' estimates that "the entire population *** did not much exceed, if it equalled, one thousand souls." The figure suggested is, I think, too large, in comparison with the earliest official basis of calculation, namely, the 209 qualified voters at the date of the first General Assembly after the erection of New Hampshire into a Royal Province. True, the list of voters in 1680 by no means embraced the whole male population of voting age; but so far as it gives any clue, it implies less than 1,000 inhabitants in 1641, and less than the 4,000 and the 6,000 which Mr. Bancroft assigns to these towns in 1675 and 1689, respectively.3

The first contemporaneous figures are those in a Report by the Lords of Trade on the American Plantations in 1721, to the effect that the number of people on Governor Shute's arrival in 1716 was computed at 9,000, and the increase up to the last hearing was about 500.4 Between this testimony

1 April, 1876, 91.

2 Belknap's Hist., ed. Farmer, i., 91.

* Hist. U. S., i., 383, 608; all references to Bancroft are to the last revision, unless otherwise stated.

+ Documents relating to Colonial Hist. of N. Y., v., 595, and Palfrey's Hist. of N. E., iv., 457. Cf. a similar estimate in Chalmers's Hist. of Revolt.

and the first census a valuable hint comes from the statement of John Farmer, chief of New Hampshire antiquaries, that the ratable inhabitants in 1732 were under 3,000,1

NOTE. The side-numerals in this and following wood-cuts indicate 100,000,

implying a total of from 12 to 13,000. Another local authority preserves the polling list in 1761, which indicates about 38,000 inhabitants; while the first attempt at actual enumeration was a census, six years later, gathered from the returns of the selectmen, and amounting to 52,700 souls, which points to a somewhat more rapid growth than before.

3

A second Provincial census, after another six years' interval, yielded over 72,000, and a less complete return obtained for the State Convention of 1775 assigned a total of about 81,000,5 or double the number in the Province some thirteen years before. Natural growth and the recuperation after the war brought these figures up to

12,946; in Holmes's Annals, 2d ed., ii., 539. Dr. Wm. Douglass (in his Summary, ii., 180) estimates 24,000 in 1742, which is credible; notice should be taken of the gain of territory in 1740 from Massachusetts. British officials estimated the white inhabitants in 1749 at 30,000 (Pitkin's Statist. View, 2d ed., 12). Burnaby's Travels (2d ed., 151) stated about 40,000 in 1759. 29,146 (Rev. Samuel Langdon, in Holmes's Annals, ii., 540).

3 Provincial Papers of N. H., vii., 170. Bancroft's estimate (ii., 38) of 50,000 whites in 1754 is excessive, and still more so Winsor's (Narrative and Critical Hist. of Amer., V, 151), taken from the Board of Trade's figures, 75,000 in 1755, quoted by Bancroft in early editions (iv., 128-9), but discarded by him later. 472,092 (Provincial Papers of N. H., x., 625-36).

5 Provincial Papers of N. H., vii., 780-81. This return was made to correct the wild estimate of Congress, which was in one form 102.000, exclusive of slaves, or as otherwise reported (John Adams's Works, vii., 302) 150,000.