41 



has appeared almost in a day. Such communities are wholly artificial and 

 precarious, but will probably be repeated many times as the assuredly 

 great mineral wealth of the Laurentian peneplain and the Yukon plateau 

 is prospected and exploited. 



The Canadian province will always be a game country, and as it be- 

 comes more accessible, its thousands of lalies, streams and wooded islands 

 will acquire new value as ideal play and recreation grounds, where the 

 weary denizens of crowded marts will find a paradise for camping, boat- 

 ing, hunting and fishing, and will x'evert temporarily to the primitive and 

 simple life. 



On the ice cap, in the tundra and in the forest collective economy pre- 

 vails to the exclusion of all others. Men produce nothing but live by 

 plundering nature of plant, animal or mineral wealth. Yet these resources 

 are subject to some degree of scientific conservation. 



We have heard much of the coal, copper, gold and tin of the Alaskan 

 coast province, and they are probably worth looking into. We have also 

 beard marvelous stories of Alaskan agriculture, of the ripening of wheat at 

 Circle City, and of potatoes and other hardy vegetables grown in ap- 

 parently impossible places. Summer days are long on the Arctic circle, 

 but that the province will never do more than furnish a limited and local 

 supply of agricultural products, and have anything to export excei)t tim- 

 ber, miiierals, fish and moscpiitoes, are among the certainties of geography. 

 Tt possesses one literally invaluable asset which can never be exploited, 

 syndicatetl, monopolized or in anyway diminishe<l, and that is scenery. 

 The combination of sea, mountain, fiord, forest, and glacier is unrivalled 

 in the world. "If you are old," says Mr. Gammett, "go to Alaska ; if you 

 are young, postpone your visit, for after Alaska all other scenery is tame." 



If our study of envii'onments proceeds from the simple to the com- 

 plex, the Arizonan, the "dry belt" province, stands next. '1 he rainfall 

 ranging from two inches to fifteen is so irregular in successive years and 

 the evaporation so enormous that Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Sonora and 

 soutliern and lower California constitute a desert area, saved from ex- 

 treme Saharan conditions by the fact that there are two less dry seasons 

 each year. The peculiar forms of desert relief and xerophilous flora were 

 shown to the Academy by Dr. McDougal a year ago. Animal forms, being 

 less plastic, are less peculiar and bizarre, but exhibit corresponding adap- 

 tation of habit. Among the extreme products of desert environment are 



