THE POPULATION OF LONDON 169 From this it is at once apparent that London far 2xceeds in population not only Paris, the city that comes nearest to it, but Scotland, Switzerland, and even our colonies at the Antipodes. It has double the population of Norway or Servia, nearly double that of Denmark or Greece. Its inhabitants are three times as numerous 1s ‘those of New York or Berlin. London contains more people than Paris, Berlin, and Brussels taken together, while it nearly doubles the united inhabitants of New York and the neighbouring cities of Brooklyn, Hoboken, and Jersey City.. So far, by London I have meant “the metropolitan area,” as it is called, the London of the Metropolitan Board of Works—now the county of London —and of the Registrar-General,' and unless the contrary is specified, this will be the meaning attached to the word London throughout this paper. But outside this area there is fast closing in a circle of towns such as Bromley, Croydon, Kingston, Brentford, Tottenham, Stratford, and West Ham, all of which are included within the Metropolitan Police District, and go to make ap what the Registrar-General calls Greater London. This London has a population but little short of five millions, and therefore exceeding that of Sweden and approaching that of Ireland. London has certainly been a large and important city since the time of the Roman occupation, but we have no means of estimating, even approximately, the number of its inhabitants before the beginning of the present century. [t is stated that, A.D. 859, some 800 vessels were employed in the port of London in the export of corn? Truly, ! These areas are mot, strictly speaking, identical; the county of London includes the hamlet of Penge, in addition to the “London” of the Registrar-General, ? Haydn's Dictionary of Dates.