isters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, and Ursulines of Jesus. The
Marist Brothers and Redemptorists have their monasteries, and there is a
creditable number of congregational schools.

The ancient See of Whithorn (Candidacasa) is now known as the diocese of
Galloway. It dates from St. Ninian, the apostle of the Southern Picts, by
whom it was founded in 397. It was destroyed in the time of the
Scandinavian invasions, and remained extinct from 808 till 1189. It fell
again at the epoch of the Reformation, and had no bishop from the death of
Andrew Durie, in 1558, till the appointment of Bishop McLachlan by Leo
XIII. The residence of the bishop is at Dumfries, where there is a
numerous congregation and an elegant church.

Argyll and the Isles is a diocese full of promise. The traditions of its
piety in ancient days are a rich inheritance. It has already thirty-eight
churches, chapels and stations, together with some numerous congregations.

INCREASE AND NUMBER OF CATHOLICS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF PIUS
IX.

About the time of the accession of Pius IX., the Catholic population of
the world was estimated by scientific men at two hundred and fifty-four
million six hundred and fifty-five thousand (see the _Scientific
Miscellany_ of the time). Since that time there has been a very
considerable increase. How great it has been we may judge from the
statistics with which we are most familiar, those of Great Britain and the
British Colonies, as well as those of the United States of America. The
eminent statisticians, Drs. Behm and Wagner, hold that the number of
Protestants has more than doubled in the same period. Some thirty-five
years ago, according to the _Scientific Miscellany_, the Protestant
population of the world was forty-eight million nine hundred and
eighty-nine thousand. Without saying that the learned men alluded to are
wrong in estimating them now at one hundred and one million, it may be
claimed that Catholics have enjoyed at least as great an increase. The
tendency of the latter, in the present age, is to spread and to spread
rapidly, whilst among Protestants, according to their own ablest writers,
there exists no such expansive power. An opinion prevails among those who
are not friendly to the Catholic Church, that such an institution can only
take root and grow in an age of ignorance, or among ignorant people. This
opinion enjoys not the sanction of the most distinguished Protestant
authors and