A VISIT TO MANITOBA EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 38/ 



is fortunate in having been built on the banks of two rivers, which 

 unite at this place, the Red River of the North and the Assiniboine. 

 Several bridges span these rivers, whose banks are well wooded, 

 and the opportunity for diversification this affords in the placing 

 of homes along the banks of these streams is a pleasant change 

 from the general flatness of the land upon which the city is built. 

 Winnipeg pays much attention to the adornment of its parks and the 

 streets of its resident districts, which have a very neat appearance 

 from the wide boulevard of twelve or fifteen feet on either side 

 of a sufficiently narrow driveway. Shade trees, mainly white elm, 

 which thrive well in that region, are being planted in these boule- 

 vards all over the city at the distance, we should judge, of about 

 fifteen feet — which mistake can be remedied later by cutting out 

 two-thirds of the trees — if they have the nerve to do it, which we 

 very much doubt. We noted, also, the overplanting of shrubs and 

 trees in the parks and other public places of the city. With this 

 little criticism there was much to commend ; so many beautiful lawns 

 and flower gardens and such brilliant flowers that reflected so 

 purely the clearness and brightness of the day, and we fully realized 

 we were in a community of charming homes. 



Early morning found us on the undulating plains of Assiniboia, 

 which looked strange indeed, with their scattered clumps of poplar 

 with underbrush of hazelnut, snowberry, silverberry, etc. For a 

 hundred miles, from daylight to Indian Head, scarcely a tree in 

 sight but low poplar, but plenty of these in little groves, rarely 

 merging into woods, as far as one could see, over all the uneven- 

 ness of the plain, in no place an exactly level prairie. Occasion- 

 ally farm homes and wide fields of grain diversify the way. At nine 

 o'clock we were at Indian Head, a town of something under 1,000 

 inhabitants, lying in the plains of that northwestern country, neat 

 and homelike, though lacking in sufficient quantity the tree growth 

 that must in time be their's. A half mile's walk from the town 

 brought us to Indian Head Experiment Station, the remotest point 

 of our journey westward. This government station, started here 

 in 1890 by the present superintendent, Mr. Angus Mackay, is on a 

 tract of quite level ground, consisting of two sections (1,200 acres). 

 At its inception there was not a trace of a bush on the premises, 

 barring probably a little stunted growth of poplar at some points. 

 Now it is enclosed with hedges of box elder, there called the Mani- 

 toba maple, upwards of twenty feet high, with avenues of the same 

 tree, varied occasionally with white elm and gray ash and other 

 sorts, running here and there throughout the tract, so that there 

 are in all thirteen miles of these avenues bordered, in most cases 



