HORTICULTURE IN CANADA. 89 



purposes. This subject covers so. wide a field that the brief 

 period of an hour will admit of touching on but a few of its 

 more important features, and, with the view of presenting these 

 in a clear and intelligent manner, I shall first give you a very 

 short sketch of the country whose horticultural progress I am 

 expected to outline. 



The Dominion of Canada consists of seven provinces, four 

 provisional territories, and a vast area to the north, much of 

 which is yet unexplored. If the traveller through this country 

 takes the train at its eastern boundary, at Halifax on the broad 

 Atlantic, he may ride with one change of cars through to the 

 shores of the Pacific, covering a distance of three thousand six 

 hundred and sixty-two miles, and all within the settled area of 

 Canada. The three most easterly provinces form a group partly 

 surrounded and more or less intersected by the ocean, known as 

 the Maritime Provinces. Following these come the goodly prov- 

 inces of Quebec and Ontario, the latter stretching westward 

 along the margins of the Great Lakes — Ontario, Erie, Huron, 

 and Superior — until its western boundary is found beyond the 

 Lake of the Woods. Here Ontario joins the " prairie province " 

 of Manitoba, west of which lie the four gigantic provisional terri- 

 tories, — Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Athabasca, — 

 comprising vast plains. In a part of the territories a wide belt 

 of the country, lying north of the 49th parallel, — which forms 

 the boundary line between the United States and Canada, — has 

 a dry climate, caused by the hot winds which blow northward 

 from the great American desert. But beyond the spent force of 

 these hot currents, beginning from one hundred and twenty-five 

 to one hundred and seventy-five miles north of the boundary, we 

 find immense partly wooded areas, watered by streams flowing 

 northward, with a soil wonderfully rich and fertile and with con- 

 ditions favorable for mixed farming, especially for the raising of 

 cattle and for dairying. Still further west stands British Co- 

 lumbia with its sea of mountains enclosing an area abounding in 

 minerals, coal, and lumber. Its Avaters teem with fish, and some 

 of the fertile valleys are being fast converted into smiling fields 

 of grain and prolific orchards. 



Let us touch briefly on the conditions found in each of the 

 divisions of this your neighboring country, and note the indica- 

 tions of horticu.ltural progress. Prince Edward Island, the 



