110	REPORT OF THE LEPROSY COMMISSION:
more familiar countries. Thus, for Belgium, according to an
enumeration made in 1879, it was four hundred and eighty-six
per square mile, for England and Wales in 1881 as much as four
hundred and forty-five, while for Norway and Sweden it was as
small as fourteen and twenty-six, respectively, for the censuses
of 1877 and 1878. if a proof be required to show the truth of
the statement that a relation between wealth and density of popu-
lation is not a matter of necessity, this will best be found in Sind.
Being near the frontier, with a good sea-port, it has for a long time
been the resort of traders from the north and west. In the interior
are one or two large trade centres rapidly increasing under the in-
fluence of established lines of railway. Prosperity has grown under
good harvests and improved means of transport to market. Al-
together Sind must be considered as being greatly above the aver-
age as regards its wealth, and yet it is but scantily populated.34
Predisposition of Races.
"The people of India proper, by which term is meant the
whole of the Western Peninsula and the plains west of the
Brahmaputra consist of a number of races and tribes of most
diverse origin, and owing to the restrictions of caste which
rigorously prohibit intermarriage, they have not amalgamated
to form a nation or even a number of nations as, for instance,
Celts, Saxons, Danes, and Normans have done to form the
English and Scotch of to-day. Religious and sectarian differ-
ences have added to the original differences of race, so that at
the present day as well as throughout her whole past history,
while India has always been a collection of many countries, no
one of these constitutes or has ever constituted a nation in the
European sense of the term."35 "The population of India pro-
per consists of the dark aboriginal races, descended from the
original occupants of the country at the time of the first Aryan
invasion;  (2) the fair or at least lighter-tinted descendants of
(34) J. A. Baines. Op. cit., Chapter II.
(35) H. E. Blandford. Op. cit., page 36.