PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS 
AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. 
By Wo. SAUNDERS, C.M.G., LL.D. 
Director of the Dominion Experimental Farm. 
The organization of the Royal Society of Canada in 1882, was the 
means of bringing together the scattered workers in science and litera- 
ture residing in different parts of the Dominion, and within its limited 
membership were included representatives of most branches of knowledge. 
In choosing the member to be raised for the time being to the dignity 
of presiding officer of this Society, care is taken that during the course 
of years the different branches of science and literature shall be thus 
honoured through their representatives. It has been the custom for the 
member elected to the Presidency to devote the main portion of his 
address to the presentation before the members, of some of the more 
important and interesting features of the work in which he is engaged. 
Permit me then to call your attention to some facts in connection 
with the development and progress of agriculture in general, also to 
the great agricultural progress which has taken place in Canada during 
the past twenty years and to the glorious outlook for the future. 
Every reader of the Old Testament is familiar with the references 
to Egypt as a land rich in corn, one that produced sufficient for its own 
population and a surplus also for export to neighbouring countries. The 
patriarch Jacob, during the time of great famine, sent his ten sons to buy 
corn in Egypt saying “ Behold I have heard that there is corn in Egypt, 
get you down thither and buy for us from thence, that we may live and 
not die.” Profane history bears testimony to the skill of the farmers 
of ancient Egypt, and this skill was exercised under favourable condi- 
tions. The soil was naturally fertile and was still further enriched by 
the annual overflow of the Nile. 
The nomads of the patriarchal ages while mainly depending for 
sustenance on their flocks and herds, also engaged, in some instances, 
extensively in the tilling of the soil. Isaac combined tillage with pas- 
toral occupations for we read that he sowed in the land of Gerar and 
reaped a hundred fold. Job also is represented as having, besides 
immense possessions in flocks and herds, 500 yoke of oxen which he em- 
ployed in ploughing and in a very great husbandry. The Israelites were 
one of the great agricultural nations of antiquity, much the larger 
proportion of them being occupied in that pursuit. Their principal 
crops were wheat, barley, spelt, millet, beans and lentils. They also had 
vineyards and groves of olive and fig trees. Theirs was a land of corn 
and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, of olive oil, milk and honey. 
