210 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
erection of the new provinces was coincident with a considerable 
increase in immigration, largely from Great Britain and the United 
States, although the population was also considerably increased by a 
less readily estimated immigration from the province of Ontario. 
In the preparation of the report of 1904 L found myself confronted 
by the fact that the region in question had only been partially sur- 
veyed, and that no agricultural survey properly so called had been made 
of any portion of it. Estimates of the agricultural possibilities of the 
region were thus matters not of knowledge but of opinion; and opinions 
of different persons, many of them equally well qualified to form 
judgments on such questions, varied very widely. in these circum- 
stances it was necessary to be guarded in the formation of any con- 
clusions about the conditions of the time and still more about the 
possibilities of the future. I felt bound, however, to consider and 
present such estimates of these possibilities as had been brought 
to my notice. At the same time | explicitly refrained from offering 
endorsement of any of these estimates. On the grounds of what 
official data were at the time available concerning the agricultural 
history and apparent tendencies of the agricultural exploitation of 
the region, I ventured to suggest some provisional conclusions of a 
very general character. Among these conclusions was the follow- 
ing :— : 
‘ Very great improvements in the productive power of the country 
and a very considerable increase in the effective population, as well as 
a more exclusive regard to wheat cultivation, would have to take place 
before the North-West could be regarded as being in a position to be 
relied upon to produce for export to Great Britain a quantity of wheat 
even nearly sufficient for the growing requirements of that country. 
That an exclusive regard to wheat cultivation is unlikely to arise seems 
certain from much of the foregoing detail. Even if the soil were 
uniformly suitable, and even if the seasons could be absolutely relied 
upon, the disposition of the people and their settlement upon small 
farms of which the owner is also the cultivator seem against the 
exclusive cultivation of one crop. The tendency of knowledge derived 
from experience and of instruction and advice derived from the experi- 
mental farms, as well as other Governmental encouragement of mixed 
farming, are all opposed to exclusive cultivation of wheat or of any 
other one crop, as is also the experience of the States immediately to 
the south of the international boundary.’ + 
The experience of the past five years very strongly confirms this 
conclusion. A considerable improvement in the productive powers of 
the country has taken place, a considerable increase in the effective 
population has occurred, yet the quantity of wheat produced is still 
far short of the quantity annually imported by Great Britain. More- 
over there has been during these years less rather than more propor- 
tional cultivation of wheat. Mixed farming has become more common. 
These facts appear in the statistics which follow. 
2 Report to the Board of Trade on the North-West of Canada, with special 
reference to Wheat Production for Export, by James Mavor, Professor of 
Political Economy in the University of Toronto, Canada, 1904 (Parliamentary 
Paper) (Cd. 2628), London (1905), p. 114. 
