Note 159 — CATHOLIC WORLD.

The figures showing the gross immigration are taken from official returns, mainly from the Reports of the Bureau of Statistics on the Commerce and Navigation of the U.S.; the Reports of the Commissioners of Emigration, New York; and Thom’s Irish Almanac and Official Directory, Dublin. The approximate number of Catholics is our own calculation. Though the population of Germany is more than one-third Catholic, we consider it safer to set down the proportion of Catholic emigrants from that country at one-fourth of the whole. When the famine began in Ireland, ninety-two per cent. of the population was Catholic; and as it was from this portion that our immigration has since been principally drawn, ninety per cent. is not considered too much to credit to Catholicity.