ning with the province of Manitoba, stretching westward for 800 miles to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, and extending about 400 miles northward from the United States boundary. Seven hundred miles of mountainous regions, with fertile valleys hidden among them, are crumpled in between the prairies and the Pacific coast. The climate, on the whole, is warmer in summer and colder in winter than in corresponding latitudes in Europe. It has a land surface nearly twenty-nine times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, or seventeen times larger than France. If the area of the whole of Europe be represented by twelve, then the area of Canada would be eleven. Large tracts in the northern Arctic regions are uninhabitable, and entirely useless for the production of foods; but across the continent there is a zone about 3,500 miles long, and nearly as wide as France, with a climate adapted to the production of foods of a superior quality. Within that belt there are some mountainous regions and not a few hundred miles of arid prairies, where the settlement will always be sparse and the production of foods scanty. These comparisons indicate roughly the enormous capacity of Canada for the production of foods. The soil has been found fertile. That of Manitoba and the North-West territories is rich in the constituents of plant food to a degree that surpasses nearly all the soils of Europe. The freezing of the land in winter, which at first sight seems a drawback, retains the soluble nitrates, which might otherwise be drained out. By competent authorities in England it has been estimated that the drainage in that country from November to March carries off to the sea a quantity of nitrates per acre sufficient for an average crop of wheat.
There have been many and great changes in the methods of agriculture during recent years. It has grown to mean more than the cultivation of land. In its primitive state, the practice was to disturb the bosom of Mother Earth, plant seeds, reap, and eat the crop.
