APPENDIX A " XLIX 



In Manitoba the deep black soil is very rich and is being exhausted 

 slowly, but the lighter land of Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta will 

 be impoverished more quickly, and the more rapidly the population 

 pours into this western country, the more rapidly will this result be 

 attained. The progressive exhaustion of the lands of the western 

 provinces under wheat cropping is probably the greatest problem 

 in conservation which faces the Canadian people at the present time. 



It is only by cultivating an amount of land which they can care 

 for properly, by adopting a proper system of rotation of crops and by 

 applying to the land suitable manures, either natural or artificial, 

 that the fertility of our lands can be maintained by the farmers. 



In view of these facts, it is a matter for sincere congratulation 

 that in parts of Manitoba and Alberta, as well as in our eastern 

 provinces, more attention within the last few years is being given to 

 mixed farming. It is to be noted as a favourable sign that within the 

 past two years serious attention is being paid to the raising of hogs, 

 100,000 of these animals having this year been shipped to the United 

 States in addition to those sent to the Canadian factories. Every 

 possible effort, however, should be made to carry instruction to the 

 farmer and to demonstrate to him the importance of caring for his 

 land. Something is now being done in this direction by our agricul- 

 tural colleges and by the Commission of Conservation, and much has 

 been done by the Federal Government through the Department of 

 Agriculture. It is to be hoped that the great grant of $10,000,000 

 now being expended by the Government for the advancement of 

 agriculture in the Dominion may, in part at least, be applied to the 

 education of our farming population in the underlying and everlasting 

 principles on winch a sound system of agriculture is based. 



Forest Products. (Timber, Pulp-Wood, &c.) 



The forests of Canada were its chief source of revenue in the 

 early days of the settlement of the country. Year by year the great 

 rafts of timber were floated down the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers 

 past Montreal and were loaded on fleets of ships at the port of Quebec. 



Later, with the advent of railways, the lumber was brought 

 in immense quantities by rail to Montreal or shipped directly to its 

 market in the United States. 



The following figures, represented graphically in the accompany- 

 ing diagram, show the yield of products of the forest (wood) annually 

 for census years going back to 1870, expressed in feet, board measure: — 



