growth of the revolutionary movement prevented a general uprising of the blacks in Cuba before their emancipation, which was officially decreed in 1887. The population of the Island in 1846 was about nine hundred thousand. More than half of the number were negroes, three-fourths of them slaves. According to the latest official figures, less than thirty per cent. of the present population are colored. How has the proportion sunk so greatly in sixty-five years? Where have the negroes gone? What has become of their children? A writer in a volume on “Cuba,” issued by the United States Bureau of the Census, states: “The diminution of the proportion of colored inhabitants during the last half century is doubtless but another illustration of the inability of the colored race to hold its own in competition with the whites, a truth which is being demonstrated on a much larger scale in the United States.” This is not at all convincing. The negroes have not been to any appreciable degree subjected to competition in Cuba. The climate and latter-day conditions are altogether favorable to their survival and increase. Two official reports indicate that they held their own under the more arduous life of slavery. We must look for an explanation elsewhere, and the most plausible seems to be that there is a much greater distribution of negro blood in Cuba than the statistics indicate. The enumerators who took the census under our military occupation acknowledged the difficulty of distinguishing among a people whose prevailing physical characteristics are dark skin and black hair, and expressed their suspicion that a large number of those who returned themselves as “whites” had negro blood in their veins. Those who have lived long and travelled extensively in Cuba, generally entertain the opinion that the proportion of pure whites in population is considerably less than seventy per cent.