THE WHEAT LANDS OF CANADA. jjj 



ing is applicable to tlie fluctuations in the province of Ontario, and 

 goes to show just as clearly that the decrease in area has had ab- 

 solutely no bearing on the wheat-producing capabilities of the 

 province. 



" A permanently high price for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that 

 ere long must be faced," says Sir W. Crookes; but, with due defer- 

 ence to so great an authority, I believe that the day of a perma- 

 nent high price for wheat is yet far distant. There will be appre- 

 ciations undoubtedly, but the sources of supply as yet undrawn 

 upon are so great that it will be long before those appreciations are 

 of any prolonged duration; but in the meantime they mean periods 

 of great prosperity to the farmer and therefore to the world. Is 

 a higher price for wheat such an unmixed calamity, after all ? Has 

 the average consumer of wheat benefited by the low price of wheat 

 of late years in proportion to the hardships endured by the pro- 

 ducer? I think not. Let those who are qualified by literary and 

 scientific knowledge point out if they will the possibility, or even 

 perhaps the probability, of at some period in the future the time 

 coming when there may be, if present conditions continue to exist, 

 a scarcity in the wheat supply, and urge as strongly as they like the 

 advisability of taking steps in good time to prevent such a calamity; 

 but nothing is to be gained by frightening the world with predic- 

 tions of evil based only on a series of unfounded assertions, mathe- 

 matical calculations, and " purely speculative computations." 

 When, if ever, the day of scarcity will come is unknown. That it 

 is yet far off appears to be tolerably certain; but it is sufficient for 

 the purposes of this article that it should be understood that Sir "W. 

 Crookes's statements concerning the wheat area of Canada are ab- 

 solutely unreliable and incorrect, and that there are millions of 

 acres of good wheat land waiting for occupation by the surplus 

 population of the world, which, when under cultivation, will assist 

 in deferring for many years the threatened day of famine. 



Dr. S^^:\ Hedin, in his account of travel through Asia, mentions as the 

 most remarkable feature in the central region of internal drainage (in 

 which the rivers drain into inland lakes) " the process of leveling which 

 goes on unceasingly. The detritus which results from the disintegrating 

 action of the weather, and the more or less mechanical agency of the 

 wind and water and gravity, is constantly being carried down from the 

 mountains all roimd its borders toward the lower parts of its depressions, 

 and being deposited there. In this way the natural inequalities in the 

 configuration of the ground are being gradually smoothed away." Mr. 

 Curzon refers to the same phenomenon in the central districts of the 

 Pamirs — the process being the exact reverse to that where the streams hew 

 out deep ravines in their course to the sea-going river. 



