HORTICULTURAL CAPABILITIES OF CANADA 13 
the surface of Lake Ontario, 1000 miles inland, being but 232 feet, atid 
that of Lake Superior, 1800 miles from the ocean, but 600 feet above 
the sea. The great lakes and river St. Lawrence, independently of the 
smaller lakes and rivers, cover an area of 100,000 square miles, and 
have been estimated to contain 1,547,792,360,000 cubic feet, or half 
the fresh water on the globe. 
Reference is made to these immense bodies of water to show their 
influence in tempering the extremes of climate, both in summer 
and winter. These lakes, some of which are 1000 feet deep, never 
freeze ; they stretch along the south and south-west of Canada, and 
hence the prevailing winds, which in the interior of that Continent 
are from the south-west and west, carry the humid vapours of those 
inland seas over Canada, causing those copious showers of rain in J une, 
July, and August, which distinguish the valley of the St. Lawrence 
from the States and regions to the west and south-west, where the 
droughts often prevail during the two or three hottest months of the year. 
Canada thus situated and lying in the region of the summer rains, 
possesses in a high degree those chief elements—heat and humidity— 
of a climate propitious to the growth of plants. ‘The spring and early 
summer are cool and humid, hence favourable for cereals and grasses, 
most of which attain maturity at or before midsummer; the summer 
and early autumn are warm enough to bring to perfection many of the 
subtropical forms of vegetation, hence the extraordinary variety of 
products from the same locality, which were exhibited in the Royal 
Horticultural Garden during the first weeks in November. 
A great variety of fruit and berries, is found growing wild over Canada; 
amongst these are, the crab-apple (Pyrus coronaria), grape (Vitis 
Labrusca), from which improved, have come the Isabella and some 
others; the frost grape (Vitis cordifolia, with the variety riparia), 
the wild yellow or red plum (Prunus Americana), the red cherry 
(P. Pennsylvanica) the black cherry (Р. serotina), the choke 
(P. virginiana), the strawberry, the raspberry, red and black (Rubus 
strigosus and В. occidentalis), ripening in June and July; the large black- 
berry (В. villosus and R. Canadensis), ripening т August and Septem. 
ber, with other kinds of blackberries, the mulberry (Morus rubra), the 
currant, gooseberry, the black and white walnuts, chestnuts, butter- 
nuts, &c., &c 
The immense extent of country, over which шапу of these fruits, 
berries, and nuts grow in Dritish North America, has been illus- 
trated by the recent exhibitions in the Royal Horticultural Garden, 
especially ‘of apples, pears and grapes from Hamilton, Canada, and 
from Nova Scotia, The one from the Atlantic sea-board, and the other 
from a thousand miles inland, from the western shores of Lake Ontario. 
North-west of this again, we find a climate propitious to these fruits ; 
to all, perhaps, except the most tender kinds. "These remarkable results 
must be taken too in connection with the fact, that fruit culture 18 yet 
in its infancy in Canada. , 
