CONNECTICUT, the most south-westerly state of New England in the United States, and one of the original members of the great confederacy, is situated in let. 41° to 42° 3' n., and long. 71° 55' to 73' 50' west. Arca. 4,750 sq. miles. Between 1790 and 1870, the inhabitants had increased from 238,141 to 537,454—being on the average an advance of 11 per cent per annum. A result so anomalous, where the general population doubles itself in a quarter of a century, is creditably explained by the fact that to all the new states of the union C. has uniformly been a nursery of educated men of every class —of merchants and agriculturists, of lawyers and statesmen. According to the census of 1870, the state, besides its two senators in the upper house of congress, sends four representatives to the lower, appointing, as the sum of both, six presidential electors. Under the existing constitution, which superseded the charter of Charles II. only in 1818, the local authorities are a governor, a lieutenant-governor, a senate of 18' to 24 members, an assembly of 237 representatives, and a supreme court. Between 1850 and 1870, the assessed value of taxable property, personal as well as real, appears to have risen from $119,088,672 to 025,433,237. Respectively to the w. and e. of Connecticut
river are the Housatonic and the Thames, of which the former is navigable 12 rn. upwards, and the latter 14. Many smaller streams afford valuable water-power. Besides the New Haven and Farmington canal, 16 in. in length, C. is traversed in almost every direction by railways. The chief towns are Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, New London, and Norwich—the second and fourth being the principal ports, and all of them being accessible from the sea. The colleges are three in number: and the schools of every grade may stand a comparison with any in the union. The soil is better fitted for pasturage than for tillage. The minerals are iron, plumbago, marble, and freestone. The staple productions are butter, cheese, wool, maize, oats, barley, wheat, flax, hemp, tobacco, and cider. There are 111 establishments for the manufacture of cotton goods, the products of which in 1870 amounted in value to $14,026,334, a total exceeded by only four other states in the union.