ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



is, I think, some twelve thousand miles away. South America is practically as clo?e to 

 Europe to-day as we are. Africa, both in the north and south is about as close to Europe 

 as we are. There is very little difference in the cost of transportation over these great ocean 

 distances and the result of it has been, thit these countries with great territories of fertile 

 lands, and with cheap labor, have been able to produce with almost equal facilities the 

 enormous quantities of crude materials, such as wheat and oats and barley, and as a 

 consequence the great consuming countries of the world are supplied as they have never 

 been before. And the prices of these products have baen going down lower and lower 

 until we find that one great result has been that these crude products of the farm have 

 been brought to the great commercial centres at very low rates Let me give you a 

 couple of instances. It costs about thirty-four cents to pay all charges for sending a 

 bushel of wheat from Manitoba to Liverpool, let us say half a cent on a pound. From 

 Australia butter has been shipped to London at a rate less than two cents a pound. The 

 transportation charges have been brought so low that it is, possible to ship butter in refrig- 

 erator steamships from the dock in Australia to the dock at London for a smaller amount 

 than it can be sent by rail from the north of England to the south. So that you see the 

 great increase in transportation facilities has reduced distances ; has brought the great 

 producing nations of the world closer to one another, and they can now barter in the 

 markets at about equal advantage one with the other. The result of this has been that 

 the products that are of easy production have suffered in price as a consequence, and only 

 those products which are more difficult to produce, which are produced by the more highly 

 cultivated people, by a people with better facilities, with better training and better educa- 

 tion, have been able to hold their own. Our farmers to-day aie turning their attention 

 more and more to the production of these higher classed articles, these articles which 

 require more skill, because thereby they come less and less into competition with cheap 

 labor and cheap soil. The production of these lower grades brings their higher pi'iced 

 labor in competition with lower priced, whereas the production of the higher classes, such 

 as the best class of fruit and dairying production brings them into competition, not with 

 cheap labor and cheap lands, but with the better class of labor and lands of Europe. 

 The second cause is the application of machinery. This perhaps might not at first 

 sight present itself quite as forcibly to your minds as it will if I give an instance or two. 

 The grains as we grow them, such as wheat and barley, have been raised from time 

 immemorial. It is impossible to say when wheat and barley and grains of all kinds were 

 first produced upon the earth. Go back as far as you will, you will find in history and 

 in archaeological remains the traces of the instruments for cutting have bsen shaped some- 

 thing like the curved arm, the sickle, and yet if you think, it was only the other day the 

 sickle went out of use among civilized people. From the time that wheat and barley and 

 oats were first produced until within a few years ago, the sickle, with practically little or 

 no change, remained the sole reaping instrument of the human race. About 1826 a 

 Scotch minister presented for examination to the Highland and Agricultural Society of 

 Scotland a new machine, the forerunner of what we now know as the reaping machine. 

 About the year 1831 Cyrus MacOormack brought out the first reaping machine in the 

 United States. It was not until the year '41 or '42 after ten long years of experiment 

 and changing and testing that this machine was finally put upon the market. It is only 

 within the last fifty years that the sickle, the scythe and the cradle after being used for 

 so many centuries have been superseded by the reaping machine. All at once what 

 wonderful developments began. The reaper and the mower, and then a very few years 

 ago came the self-binder, and we have to-day in California the harvester and header 

 machine, drawn by from eighteen to twenty-four horses or mules, which reaps and 

 threshes the grain and leaves it in bags on the field. The question we ask ourselves right 

 here is, "What next ?" One hesitates to say or give an answer to that question when 

 we see what has happened, what wonderful steps in progress have been made from the 

 simple sickle or scythe to the self-binder. When within the period of thirty or forty 

 years such wonderful evolution has taken place after a long period of quiescence, one may 

 say, what will be introduced next ? 



Take another instance. In connection with dairying the method in olden times of 

 churning the milk was by a very simple operation, either by means of a bag hung up and 



