AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH-WEST CANADA. 217 
who might wish to be very remote from others may lead the country 
into extremely heavy expenses for railways, roads, education, police, &c. 
For example, some Scottish settlers who had placed themselves by 
singular choice over one hundred miles from a railway station had to 
be visited during the winters of 1907 and 1908 by a troop of Mounted 
Police, to whom the severe journey was an arduous and costly affair. 
The provision of Governmental administration for isolated groups is 
thus very expensive, and for that reason sometimes very inadequate. 
The disadvantages of isolated and sparse settlement are felt most 
acutely in respect to education. Although the farmers appear to desire 
that their children should be educated there are great tracts in which 
there is no provision at all, and other great tracts in which the provision 
is very slender. 
For these reasons the recent settlements to the north of Prince 
Albert and those in the Peace River District seem to be quite premature. 
They are produced by a mere furore for change. Most of the farmers 
who have gone to the regions remote from markets and remote from 
civilisation have sold their farms in Manitoba, and even in Ontario, 
and have gone to the remote regions because they believed the 
optimistic tales of the persons who had visited the district in a casual 
way. The authoritative opinion of agricultural experts is altogether 
against the settlement of the Peace River District under present con- 
ditions, yet remoteness has a great charm for some people. 
The administrative expenses of a widely scattered population must 
be disproportionately heavy, no matter how the real incidence of the 
cost may be concealed by indirect taxation and by the system of pro- 
vincial subsidies. | The cost of roads has only been prevented from 
becoming an intolerable burden by mere neglect of them. As the 
road allowances come to be defined, and as the traffic upon them 
increases, either the roads must continue to be neglected, to the great 
loss of the inhabitants, or they must be kept in repair at an enormous 
cost. 
Collection of Agricultural Statistics. 
It is not necessary to urge the importance of the collection of 
reliable agricultural statistics, but it seems to be advisable to remark 
that their collection in Canada is not in a very satisfactory condition 
at present. 
In 1908 the duties of the recently established permanent Census 
and Statistical Office at Ottawa were enlarged, and this office was 
entrusted with the collection of agricultural statistics throughout the 
Dominion. This measure did not, however, result in the abrogation 
of the functions of the provincial statistical officers. We are thus 
periodically presented with two sets of statistics for the same areas, 
one set collected and compiled by the Dominion Statistical Depart- 
ment and another set collected and compiled by the provincial 
authorities. The methods adopted in the collection and compilation 
are not the same, and the statistics present very grave discrepancies. 
For example, the estimate of the Dominion Statistical Office for the 
wheat crop of 1908 is 91,853,000 bushels, while the combined esti- 
mates of the three prairie provinces is 107,002,093 bushels, a difference 
