The population of Spain, according to the census of 1877, is 16,625,000, including the Balearic and Canary Islands, and the North African possessions. The number of inhabitants in Spain has fluctuated much at different periods, according as war, emigration, or bad government have affected the condition of the people. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the population, according to the only estimates procurable, was about 9,000,000; in 1621, at the close of Philip III.'s reign, it had sunk to 6,000,000, the lowest point on record; it gradually rose from 7,500,000 at the end of the seventeenth century to 10,500,000 at the close of the eighteenth. The wars of Napoleon then lowered it by 500,000, but in 1821 it had recovered, and reached 11,600,000. A more rapid increase then took place till 1832, when the population numbered 14,600,000. The Carlist and civil wars which marked the beginning of the reign of Isabella II. reduced it by more than 2,000,000, if the returns are exact. In 1837 and in 1846 it stood at 12,200,000. In 1857 at 15,500,000, whence it mounted rapidly to 16,800,000 in 1870, a total which the late Carlist war and that in Cuba has reduced by some 200,000; and at the last census, 1877, as said above, the returns were 16,625,000. The number of inhabitants to the square mile is 90, just half that of France, about a third that of Great Britain, and a fifth that of Belgium. This comparative scarcity is easily accounted for when we consider that nearly one-half (46 per cent.) of the territory still remains uncultivated; and although a considerable portion of this consists of mountain or of naturally sterile soil, a still larger portion of it is susceptible of some kind of cultivation, and even the portion under cultivation would under good husbandry, support a much larger population than it actually does.