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   HIBBAIR-1:!ST WIY Oi' A(,UICU'LTURE IN DANE COUNTY. 203
                      CHAPTER VII.
                 DENSITY OF POPULATION.
  The table below, showing density of population, has been care-
fully made out with the intention of giving changes in population
actually on farms. This has not been altogether possible, but
where villages are included the fact is mentioned.
  The first thing of interest is the large population of i86o, and
the comparatively uniform distribution over the county, indicat-
ing that about all the available land was occupied. From i86o
to i870 ten different towns show a decrease; that was, at least in
part, owing to the large numbers who entered the army and failed
to return, or who returned, but with others had gone to the new
lands of the West before 1870.
  At least twenty-three towns show a decline in the decade fol-
lowing, this being the time of the greatest exodus of discouraged
wheat growers in search of greener fields. At the same time
there was a marked increase in some half-dozen towns, and with
unimportant exceptions the increase was in Albion, Dunkirk,
Christiana, and Pleasant Springs, that is to say, in the towns that
were fast coming to the front in the new business of tobacco
growing.93 Farms were divided, either by sale or rent, and more
help was needed to raise tobacco than had been required in gen-
eral farming.
   From i88o to r890 there was a decrease in some fourteen towns
and an increase in about an equal number. Here we find the
same influences at work. The increase is in the tobacco district,
following the spread of the crop to new towns, noticeably Burke
and Cottage Grove. The increase in tobacco culture and the in-
  "Dane and Cottage Grove sh6w Increases, but this was owing, for the
moat
  part, to villages which had recently taken a start.
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