THE MEANING OF BILLION
Sm,—In last week's issue of your paper " Janus " states that the popu- lation of the world is about two billion. According to Chambers's dictionary a billion is " a million or thousand thousand of millions (r,000,000,000,000)." The land surface of the earth is, I believe, about so,000,000 square miles so, according to " Janus," the average density of population over that said land surface is 40,000 to the square mile. This makes 8o square yards roughly for each inhabitant of the globe on the average, but if we exclude the Siberian wastes, those of Northern Canada, the Sahara, central Australia, Greenland, &c., and crowd the remaining available space with such a popu- lation, I should hardly have elbow room to write this letter. So I don't think " Janus " can be right.—Yours faithfully, A. L. ELDER.
Grosvenor Club, Chester.
[Janus writes: Billion in France and the United States means t,000,000,000, and I so used it. But it appears to be true that in this country it means t,000,000,000,000—a number not in frequent use.]
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