100 



style mill that turned out the flour used by our ancestors is a thing of 

 the past, and the skill and science displayed in the manufacture of that 

 commodity now, has developed the growth of cities like St. Paul and 

 Minneapolis ; and Rat Portage bids fair, with its water power to rise 

 to similar eminence. 



But continuous cultivation rapidly exhausts the soil, of which 

 Eastern Canada and the Eastern States are a living example, and the 

 materials yearly extracted therefrom, must be returned by fertilizers, 

 or the production fails. 



In 1889 Mr. Gordon Brown calculated the amount of phosphorous 

 actually contained in the grain annually shipped from the port of 

 Monti-eal, estimating it for this purpose in the form of phosphoric acid. 

 The shipment of that year amounted to 292,534 tons, and the quantity 

 of phosphoric acid sent away in it equalled 2,340 tons. Taking the 

 average quantity of this substance contained in good soils, he found this 

 meant an exhaustion to a depth of one foot of 70,320 acres, in so far 

 as ]Dhosphates are concerned, and that to restore this 5,850 tons of 

 artificial manure would be required. The total loss of phosphoric acid 

 in the year to Canada, he estimated, represented $500,000. 



This again leads to development. Our new phosphate industry, 

 the product of which is not yet used ab home, is in constantly increasing 

 demand abroad, and when its necessity becomes apparent here, such 

 development will take place around the scene of its production that 

 will wake the echoes of the old Laurentian hills, and imagination 

 would not be far astray in picturing a t our Chaudiere water-power 

 huge manufactviring establishments for grinding, treating nnd manipu- 

 lating this necessary adjunct to wheat growth, long after the present 

 lumber business has removed to points still further away. 



Another valuable point about plant life is, that where one species 

 fails, another may succeed. Tea cultivation succeeded the old coffee 

 plantations of Ceylon when they gave out, and the same may be said of 

 fruit culture. Dye plants are now scarcely cultivated, a chemical 

 treatment of coal tar producing to-day most of the dyes of commerce, 

 and the land that yielded these plants is turned to other uses. 



As regards animal life, that has had much to do with the civiliza- 

 tion of the world. From the days when the patriarchs of old moved 



