It needs no ghost from the tomb to tell us that some of these census returns are wrong, and widely wrong. An increase of 221 per thousand during a decade (1850-60) of universal and extraordinary prosperity, under singularly favourable conditions, seems every way likely and calls for no remark. But the following decade (1860-70), while it wrought ruin upon the Whites, brought freedom to the Blacks and in no way worked them any hardship. That their rate of increase should have fallen off from 221 to ninety-nine seems, then, quite incredible. Again, the next decade (1870-80) marked the end of the riot of Africanism in the South, and its second half saw white supremacy restored and the Blacks forcibly repressed. On the whole, then, it could hardly have been so favourable to the Negroes as the preceding, and yet their numbers leap up nearly two millions, at the astounding rate of 349 per thousand. Their conditions were certainly no worse during the next decade (1880-90), yet they grow only half as much, and at a rate little over one-third as fast--only 138 per thousand. There is no visible sign of improvement in conditions during the next decade, yet they multiply measurably faster--at the rate of 180 per thousand. When the results for 1880 were announced, it was felt that the game was lost for the white man. Accordingly, in 1883, Professor C. A. Gardiner, of Brooklyn, N.Y., could forecast that in thirty years the Southern Negro would outstrip the Southern White in wealth, intelligence, and numbers, and within a century would absorb that White completely!--a prediction only less buoyant and highly coloured than Gen. Pope's of July 14, 1867, that "five years will have transferred intelligence and education, so far as the masses are concerned, to the colored people of this district" (Alabama, Georgia, Florida). At such a rate the Negroes in 1900 would have numbered about fourteen millions, and in 1910 about twenty millions, in 1920 nearly thirty millions; in 1950 they would have surpassed eighty millions, the present population of our Union, and in 1990 they would have reached 320 millions. So that the practically complete Africanization of the United States would be only a question of this century. The census of 1890 showed an immense falling off in this rate (from 349 to 138) and so allayed such fears. The last census shows, apparently, a slight rise in the Negro increase (from 138 to 180)--which, however, remains notably behind that of the Whites (212), by about 15 per cent.