which responds quickly to generous treatment, and there can be no doubt that the commercial superphosphates, basic slag, crushed bones, and so on, which are so largely employed in the British Islands, would answer equally well on Prince Edward Island. Marsh-mud, sea-weed, and fish-refuse are also used as manures.

CROPS AND LIVE STOCK

The two farm-crops which grow nearest to perfection on Prince Edward Island are oats and potatoes, followed more or less closely in point of quality by wheat, turnips, and barley. Wheat and oats will respectively yield 18 to 30, and 25 to 70 bushels per acre, whilst potatoes will not uncommonly yield 250, and swede turnips 750 bushels per acre, and sometimes up to 300 and 1000 bushels, respectively. The yield of crops depends on the cleanness of the land and on the application of fertilisers. The farmers of the Island understand their business, and it is long since they left behind its elementary stages. But there are differences among them, as among farmers in any other country, in respect to the application of brains, of hands, and of manures. The Provincial Government has, in connection with its well-appointed experimental farm, done much to promote a better understanding not only of the cultivation and fertilising of the soil, but also of the breeding of improved cattle, sheep, and pigs. In respect to the breeding of horses, of the sort chiefly required on the North American Continent, the Prince Edward Island farmers have long borne a high reputation. The Island, indeed, has long been known under a pet name of "the Garden of Canada." The soil of the Island is especially adapted to sheep, for it is light, dry, and sound, with sweet, nutritious herbage on wellfarmed land, clover growing luxuriantly after a liberal application of mussel-mud. The quality and character

of the cattle and sheep are being raised by importations of superior blood, and it is obvious that the land. will carry good stock profitably, whilst bad stock are profitable nowhere in comparison. Co-operative dairying has made considerable progress of late years, and this in itself will be a powerful stimulus toward the breeding of improved dairy stock.

ADMINISTRATION, COURTS, AND SCHOOLS

The public affairs of the Province of Prince Edward Island are administered by a Lieutenant-Governor and an Executive Council of nine members, three with portfolios and six without, assisted by a Legislative Council of thirteen members, and a Legislative Assembly of thirty members, both elective. The LieutenantGovernor is appointed by the Governor-General of Canada in council. The Island returns six members to the Dominion House of Commons, and four senators are appointed to the Dominion Senate by the Crown. The franchise for the House of Assembly is practically that of residential manhood suffrage. The Provincial Legislature sits at Charlottetown, in which, as the capital town of the Island, all the public offices are located. The Province is empowered to frame its own civil laws, in common with other Provinces of the Dominion, but in all criminal cases the form employed in the courts is the criminal law of the Dominion at large. The free school system, for which Canada has long been favourably known, has been established nearly half a century on the Island, and a comprehensive educational establishment, conducted at the cost of the community, is managed by a Department of Education formed under an ample and liberal Public Schools Act which was passed in 1877. The capital town is proud of its two colleges, Prince of Wales's and St. Dunstan's; of its three large public schools, its two convent schools

for girls, its Church of England (St. Peter's) private schools for boys and girls. All the country districts are also well supplied with schools, and education of the young is very properly considered one of the first and most imperative duties of the State in all newlysettled as well as in older inhabited districts. The post-office and the school advance together into the prairies and backwoods of Canada.

FISHERIES

Prince Edward Island is regarded, from a fisherman's point of view, as possessing around its coasts the best waters to be found in the whole of the great region of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For all that, however, and owing perhaps to the profusion of piscatorial wealth at everybody's door, these waters have not been utilised to anything near their possibilities. The tastes of the islanders have been all along chiefly in the direction of agriculture, the soil being eminently suitable for crops and live stock, for arable cultivation, and for grassland husbandry, for grain and roots, for horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, and for the production of cheese and butter. The denizens of the vasty deep which are most abundant are mackerel, herring, lobster, oysters, cod, hake, while salmon and trout are to be found in the rivers. These fishing grounds, and especially, perhaps, those appertaining to oysters, are said to be susceptible of great development. A glance at the map will disclose the fact that, relatively to the area of the Island, its coast-line is very extensive, the inlets, bays, and estuaries being unusually numerous. There is no room to doubt that, in her waters round the coast, Prince Edward Island possesses great potential wealth, which in course of time will command the attention it so richly merits,

POPULATION

The smallest of the Provinces of Canada, Prince Edward Island, is more thickly populated than any of the others; but there is still room upon it for a much larger number of people, to whom it confidently offers prosperity and happiness as tillers of a willing soil and breeders of superior live stock of the farm. Soine explanation of its greater wealth of population may be found in the pleasing appellations it has won, viz., "The Garden of Canada," and, in respect to its excellent horses, "The Arabia of America." The population numbered 109,078 in the census of 1891, and this gives 54.5 persons, of all ages, per sq. m. of land. There were then 54,881 males and 54,197 females, and it does not therefore appear that female emigrants from Europe are as sorely needed as, for instance, they are in the Great North-West. There are now 100,000 more people on the Island than there were a century ago, and as it is a very pleasant land to live in, the coming century may be expected to add, in all probability, another 100,000 to the population. There are now fewer than 300 Indians, all of the Micmac tribe, and the number is slowly but inevitably diminishing on the Island, as indeed it is elsewhere in North America.

MANITOBA

BY SIDNEY G. B. CORYN

THE Dominion of Canada contains seven provinces, of which Manitoba is the central, and, from an agricultural point of view, the most important. The Province of Manitoba has an area of 116,021 square miles, or about 74,000,000 acres, about equal to the combined areas of England, Scotland and Ireland.

To an agricultural country the quality of the soil is of the first importance. Professor Tanner, well known in the front ranks of English authorities, says of it: "I am bound to state that, although we have hitherto considered the black earth of Central Russia the richest soil in the world, that land has now to yield its distinguished position to the rich, deep, black soils of Manitoba and the North-West Territories. Here it is that the champion soils of the world are to be found."

But yet Manitoba is not entirely agricultural, nor does it consist exclusively of prairie land. Its forests are ample enough for fuel and for ornament; its rivers swarm with fish, and its lakes-Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis-tempt the tourist and the fisherman from less favoured regions.

The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway was, to Manitoba, the one thing necessary to its advance. Within the confines of the province there are to-day over 1500 miles of railway lines, and 1000 schools are under the control of the Government.

Winnipeg, on the Red River, is the capital of Manitoba and the chief city of the whole North-West