HEAVY WHEAT IN NEW BRUNSWICK. 91 



This Company, though to its shareholders it has proved 

 a failure, has been of considerable service to the colony, 

 and under its present management, is capable of being of 

 much use to intending settlers from the mother country. 

 Incorporated by act of parliament, it bought 550,000 

 acres from the crown in this county of York, and has 

 opened roads in various directions, established a resident 

 clergyman and medical practitioner at Stanley, and pro- 

 moted the settlement of many respectable emigrant 

 families in the neighbourhood. Immediately around the 

 town of Stanley, the land is by no means of first-rate 

 quality, but it produces 25 bushels of wheat an acre, and 

 200 to 300 bushels of potatoes. The wheat is thin 

 skinned ; averages 64 to 68 lb. a bushel ; 68 lb. is com- 

 mon, and it is said sometimes to weigh as much as 70 lb. 

 These high weights of wheat have often been given me 

 in different parts of New Brunswick. I suppose that the 

 very hot summers dry the grain so much as to give it 

 superior density. 



On one of the farms I visited, I found improvements 

 proceeding as an Englishman likes to do his work — clear- 

 ing, stumping, taking off stones, and trenching all at one 

 operation. This no doubt makes the land pleasanter to 

 look upon, and gives it a more civilised appearance than 

 when the stumps are left for seven or eight years to 

 rot before they are taken out. But it costs £10 cur- 

 rency an acre to clear it after this manner; so that, 

 granting this method to be as cheap In the long run, it is 

 quite beyond the means of the mass of new settlers. The 

 owner of this farm, himself a new settler, assured me that 

 it was a great mistake for a person with a little capital to 

 settle in the wilderness, with the view of clearing himself 

 a farm, when intervale land can be bought for £10 

 an acre. I believe there is much truth in this, unless 

 a very favourably situated grant of good land can be 

 obtained. The turnips (Aberdeen yellows) were on this 



