FRANCE, the most westerly portion of central Europe, extends from 42° 20' to 51° 5' n. lat., and from 8° 15' e. long. to 4° 54' w. long. It is bounded on the n. by the chan nel and the straits of Dover, which separate it from England, by Belgium, the grand duchy of Luxemburg, and the Rhenish provinces of Prussia; on the e. by the lately annexed German provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, lay several of the Swiss cantons, and by Italy; on the s. by the Mediterranean and the dominions of Spain, from which it is separated by the Pyrenees; and on the w. by the Atlantic (the bay of Biscay). The greatest length of F., measured from Dunkirk in the n. to the Col de Falgueres in the s., is about 620 m. ; and its greatest breadth, from e. to w., measured from the new boundary line in the Vosges to cape St. Matthieu, in Finisterre, is about 550 miles. Its circumference. inclusive of sinuosities, is estimated at. nearly ajoo ta., or 5,000 kilo meters, of which nearly the half'is of maritime coast-lines, which are sub divided in the proportion of about 600 kilom. on the Mediterranean, 950 kilom. the Atlantic, and about 940 k]lom, on the northern frontiers. The superficial area of F., including the two Savoy provinces, and Corsica, a department of the republic, but excluding the departments of the Bas-Rhin and the other territories lost to F. by tho treaty of peace concluded with Germany in 1871, is reckoned at about ,204,000 sq. miles. The possessions of F. which are situated in non=European parts of the world, have a total superficial area of 240,000 sq. miles. Algeria, with 'its 122.500 sq.m., is here included; but in French official statistics, Algeria is ranked separately from the other colonies as a more immediate dependency. F. is divided into 87 departments, most of which have been named from the rivers or mountains by which they are intersected. The foregoing table gives the mines of the ancient provinces of F., with the correspond big departments, their chief towns, areas in hectares, and the population for 1872. The pop. of F., exclusive of Algeria and the colonies, was found by the census of 1876 to amount to 30,905,788. "
By the treaties with Germany of Feb. and May, 1871, F. lost 1,447,466 hectares of land, and 1,597,228 inhabitants, comprised within' 1689 communes, and distributed over five departments. These ]psses included the whole of the old department of the Bas-Rhin, two arrondissements with a fraction of the third (Belfort) of the department of the Haut-Rhin, the greater poition of the department of the Moselle, together with a number of cantons and communes in the department of the Meurthe and Vosges. The portions of the two departments of the Meurthe and Moselle remaining to F. have been incorporated into one.
Chief Cities.—The,follbwing table gives the populations of some of the largest cities of F. in 1872 t The provinces of Savoy and Nice were ceded to F. by Sardinia, in with a treaty between the two governments, signed in 1861. The following table gives the on-European dependencies of France: The total superficial area of the French colonies, including Algeria, and reckoning the districts under French protection, is estimated, as has been said, at 240 sq.m., and the population at about 6 millions; but of the latter number the great majority are natives and savages, or belong to only half-civilized races. The methods employed in taking the census are, moreover, so different in the different colonies, that the results are not entirely beyond question; while the limits of French protectorate authority have been very considerably diminished of late years in the eastern hemisphere, and in Africa also, if we except Algeria.
Population. —The population of F. has not exhibited the same rate of increase as other first-class European powers during the present century, for while the population of Great Britain has, nearly doubled within the last fifty years, that of F. scarcely shows an increase of 40 per cent for the same period. In 1875, the birth-rate was only 2.64 per 100 inhabitants, a rate lower than in any other European country.