34 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. (Vot. VIII. 
Straits of Belle Isle, up the north side of the estuary of the St. Lawrence. 
At Murray Bay the temperature of the water in August at a mile off 
the land registered on the surface 46° and at eighteen fathoms only 
3814° Fahrenheit. Semi-arctic plants are found here and at Tadousac, 
as well as farther down the estuary. On the south shore at Cacouna 
and Metis the water is less cold, without doubt due to the tempering 
influence of the fresh waters of the St. Lawrence, which mingle with the 
colder Boreal current, the two then proceeding outwards to the gulf by 
the south shore. 
The flowers confined to the prairies probably constitute our youngest 
group. The area within which they are found is the most recently formed, 
geologically speaking, and around Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba may 
be said in places to be still in process of formation. The absence of 
plants familiar in other parts of Canada is just as striking a characteris- 
tic of the prairies as the presence of new forms there. Whether the 
whole prairies have been at one time covered with forest, may be open 
to question, but there is a strong probability that to forest fires, constant- 
ly recurring, may be attributed the gradual enlargement of the prairie 
area and the formation of new prairies. It may be objected that were 
this the case, the stumps and roots of trees should be found on the sur- 
face of the prairie. They are, however, sometimes found and that they 
have not been more frequently observed is probably due to the rapid 
decay—one authority gives four years—of the stumps of the poplar, 
the almost universal tree of the prairies and the immediately surround- 
ing forests. 
The influences at work to give individuality to a plant on the prairies 
are very striking. The rainfall is light, the atmosphere is dry, the play 
of the winds is uninterrupted, there is a general absence, except in the 
river valleys, of the protecting influence of the trees and thus to each 
plant there is a greater supply, and a longer period, of light during the 
summer months, the nights are cooler, there is generally a uniform soil, 
often a black or sandy loam, over large areas of country, and there is 
in the vast expanses of level or relatively level plain, an entire absence 
of marked physical surroundings. Why should not all this environ- 
ment have its influence on the individuality of plants just as we find 
that the distinctive features of countries have their effect in helping to 
mould the characters of their people ? 
The longer light during the day and the cooler nights have had 
even more to do with the high standard of the wheat grown in Manitoba 
than the magnificent fertile soil. It seems to be a rule that the nearer 
wheat is grown to the most northerly point where such growth success- 
fully is possible, the better is the wheat. This may prove to be a rule 
