Area of the British Empire: Its Population, Finances, and Commerce.

From this table it will be seen that Britain has already annexed one-seventh of the globe (not reckoning water), and holds one-fourth of the human race under her sway. Her foreign possessions, being 65 times larger than her own area, include several places not enumerated in the above list; for instance, in Australasia a portion of New Guinea; in Africa, Ascension (34 square miles), Basutoland (10,293 square miles); in Asia, Aden (5 square miles), Perim (7 square miles), and that precious jewel Cyprus (3,700 square miles), whose principal industry would appear to be the breeding and catching of locusts, of which British subjects there were 195 thousand millions destroyed in the Government pits during 1883, and the cry was still "they come." The island of Rotumah, in Australasia (14 square miles), Norfolk Island (237 square miles), and Heligoland conclude the list of our possessions, but there are still fanatics who desire to add and go on adding, regardless of the sage remark of Napoleon I. that "Empires generally die of indigestion through having swallowed too much territory."