ON AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT. 9 



merce, have also advanced most in the art of persuading 

 unwilling soils to yield continuous and abundant crops. 

 In Holland, Flanders, and Great Britain, the wealth 

 gained by commerce has permanently improved and 

 enriched vast tracts of available land, and has redeemed 

 to the use of man whole districts, which, in a state of 

 nature, were wholly unavailable for the production of 

 human food. 



I have in almost every county at home remarked, 

 that among the most zealous improvers were some who, 

 retiring from commercial pursuits, came fresh to the 

 tilling of the soil, untrammelled by prejudice, open to 

 weigh fairly the chances of profit from this or that mode 

 of husbandry, new to the district, and prepared, by pre 

 vious habits, to prosecute with earnest attention what 

 they had satisfied themselves was likely to promote their 

 private profit, and the good of the neighbourhood. And 

 here at Bathurst, in the case of Mr Ferguson and others, 

 and again at Miramichi, at St John, and at various 

 other places in New Brunswick, I found the most suc 

 cessful merchants the most active also in promoting 

 agricultural improvement among others, and in setting, 

 so far as their opportunities allowed, a valuable example 

 by their own personal exertions. 



The wheat-midge which, as I have mentioned, has 

 not as yet been observed on the Kestigouche is much 

 complained of here, and has greatly injured the crops, 

 especially of the French settlers. The consequence here, 

 also, is similar to that which, in a greater degree, has 

 taken place on the lower St Lawrence. The oat has 

 been substituted for wheat on their farms, and oatmeal 

 for wheaten flour as the food of their families. Twenty 

 years ago, no oatmeal was used in the district ; and 

 though the cultivation of oats, and the manufacture and 

 use of oatmeal, gradually became important, still, in 1845, 

 no oatmeal was imported into Bathurst. Since that 



