See Views 1, 2, 3, where the numbers of thousands of illiterate at 20 are exhibited, as well as could be done in those charts, by circular dots. See, also, the Views showing the per cent. of white illiterate in 1840, 1850, and 1860.

TABLE III.-The prime object of this table is to give the percentage, the figures for which are placed on the right. But the numbers of illiterate and of adults from which the per cent. is derived, are also given in immediate connection. The per cent. of foreign white is substantially the same as that of foreign total, and that of native colored does not differ materially from total colored. The slaves are given (as they have been by others) according to their legal status, as all unable to read and write. This, in most of the States, could not have been very far from their actual condition, but each reader can make deductions according to his own knowledge and judgment. The statistics of the unfortunate, or excepted, classes of white persons-the idiotic, the insane, the blind, and the deaf-are given in the last four columns, on account of their relation to this question of the per cent. of illiterate, especially in those States where very few are unable to read. They will also be, on other accounts, interesting and instructive. It will be remembered, however, that in many of the States a large proportion of the blind, and deaf, and of the insane, are able to read. Perhaps the next census report will give us the statistics of the illiteracy of these classes.

The computations for Table III furnished the numbers at twenty years of age in 1840, 1850, and 1860, thus giving the whole number who became of age (twenty-one years) in 1841, 1851, and 1861, and the number of them who were unable to read and write. These numbers are set down in Table IV, and in connection with them the per cent. for the three decades is compared. Table V gives the statistics of white adults and illiterate for 1840.

All these Views require of us, in studying them, to keep in mind the particular design of each View, and the special use of the squares and circles in it. As in the Arabic notation, 10 may mean either ten men, or ten thousand, or 10 dollars, or 10 per cent., or 10 parts, and so on; so here, the group of units, may mean either 10 thousand illiterate adults, as in No. 1; or ten thousand native white illiterate, as in Nos. 2 and 3; or 10 thousand illiterate women in excess, as in Nos. 4 and 5; or 10 women more than a hun dred to every hundred men, or 10 thousand adult slaves, as in No. 8; or 10 per cent., as in some of the other Views. This must be kept in mind.

1. We should first study each chart by itself, noticing the facts standing out on the face of that one chart, and also comparing the different States and sections of the country with each other.

2. We should then compare with each other, and study together, those of the same class, (as 2 and 3; 4 and 5; 6 and 7,) where the dots are used with exactly the same meaning. We may thus study the progress of the several States, and of the whole country, from census to census.

3. In comparing with each other the different classes, where the unit dots are used differently, (as 1 with 2 and 3; or 4 and 5 with 6 and 7,) we must keep in mind this difference in the use of the dots, and the difference of the general design of the several

Views.

These suggestions are made in advance to prevent any misapprehension or false impression at the outset, at the first sight of these illustrations, such as might naturally arise from the impression that a particular square or circle always means the same thing.

THE BIRD'S-EYE VIEWS.

In the following views, the "Bird's-eye Notation," for numbers is employed. It was first published in St. Louis, in 1862, in a pamphlet entitled "Bird's-eye Views of Slavery in Missouri, by E. Leigh, M. D." It was devised for the purpose of giving expression to numbers—for bringing them out to view in their actual proportions and relations to each other, as they are seen in nature; in their geographical distribution, as shown in maps and charts; and in their succession in time, as shown in historical tables and charts. Our Arabic figures are a kind of short-hand notation for numbers; while they record them they hide them; they cover them up as in treasure-houses, where they are carefully preserved, but are not exposed to view so as to be seen in their actual proportions.

This notation brings them to the light; it uncovers and reveals them. It gives, in the strictest sense of the words, "pictures of numbers." Such views as these could, with proper arrangements, be actually taken from nature by the art of the photographer. While the short hand Arabic figures serve admirably the purposes of the historian, the mathematician, and the accountant, for quick, safe, and condensed record and arithmetical calculation, the bird's-eye notation serves for a more full, distinct, and clear expression and illustration. The Arabic figures were therefore used in the tables. This representative notation is used in the views.

It may, perhaps, be well enough explained in the words of the original pamphlet in 1862, so changed as to adapt them to View 1, before us.

EXPLANATION.-"If, when the census of 1840 was taken, the illiterate whites in cach State in the Union had been gathered together near the center of the States and collected in regiments of 1,000 persons each, and these regiments arranged in regular order, they would have prescuted to the eye of a person passing over in a balloon, or to the eye of a bird flying over at a proper height in the air, very much such an appearance as that exhibited in View I. For, each one of the dots in this map or view represents a regiment or collection of 1,000 persons. Thus, the forty-seven thousand illiterate white adults in the State of New York are represented by forty-seven dots; the thirtysix thousand in Pennsylvania by thirty-six dots, and so in all the States." No further explanation is needed, save what is given at the bottom of each View. Every one who examines the Views will quickly perceive their plan and meaning, and, on studying and comparing them, will see their use.

VIEW 1.-This map shows the geographical distribution of white illiteracy as the cencus of 1840 first revealed it. We see, at the first glance, that it was very uniformly distributed over the country, with the exception of the New England States, which had so long enjoyed the advantages of common school education, and the extreme northwest and southwest, which were then but thinly inhabited. It represents by thousands, or by regiments, the numbers recorded in Tables IV and V. See also Table I. The common impression that white illiteracy is to be found especially among the "poor whites" of the cotton or plantation States, is at once seen to be an error. In the six northern slave States, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, which are rather farming than plantation States, there were much larger numbers who could not read.

The very general idea, also, that the free North is comparatively free from this calamity is seen to be a mistake, there being twice as many white illiterate in the northern tier of States, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, as there were in the plantation slave States, and almost as many as there were in the six great farming slave States.

And we were evidently by no means indebted to our foreign-born population for any very large part of this evil, for it is seen to have existed at that time chiefly in those

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by Edwin Leigh, in the clerk's office of the United States district court for the eastern district of Missouri.

States into which the immigrant had then hardly begun to penetrate; and, besides, the great tide of unlettered immigrants had then hardly begun to flow toward our shores. The widespread and comparatively uniform diffusion of the evil, and its existence chiefly among our own native-born citizens, are the great facts which confront us here at the outset.

VIEW 2.-This map holds up before our eyes the same great painful facts-ignorance widespread and spreading-not limited to unfavored regions, but uniformly diffused; a national and not a sectional calamity; an evil of native growth rather than of foreign origin. Still the bookless white population, though standing by tens of thousands in the plantation States, is more multitudinous in the farming slave States and in the Northern States. And now we see, directly and definitely, that it is mainly among the people born and bred in our own country.

The great increase of this calamity is conspicuous here. Not only along the Canadian border and in the railroad-building States around the great immigrant-receiving seaports, such as Boston and New York, and in the States where our other large cities are found, and where untaught immigrants have begun to crowd, but all over the country we find our American-born citizens growing up in masses untaught. Delaware, indeed, remains the same, and in South Carolina there are six thousand less; but in all the other States there are more than there were in 1840. In a few States there are a few thousand more, but in most of them there are ten, twenty, thirty thousand more of our own native-born white illiterate, besides the twenty and fifty thousand foreign-born added to Massachusetts and New York; in the whole country 1,012,019, where there were 579,316 in 1840; four hundred thousand more-a whole army of recruits-a tremendous majority for a presidential vote. Thus, in this most important matter of the increasing numbers of illiterate white adults, 1840-'50 were ten years of retrograde rather than of progress. For the exact figures, here represented in round thousands, see Tables III and IV; compare also Table II. View 3 is also derived from the same tables,