Climate of the Canadian West. 1 BOS 
known effects in the West. I hesitate to mention the dear 
old claim of cool nights, dreading your smiles, yet it is a 
fact that as a rule they are too cool to sleep uncovered; and 
a sultry night is more rare, even, than a sultry day. This 
intensity of the heat makes up for the comparative short- 
ness of the season of cultivation, urging grain to a far 
greater celerity of growth than proceeds in more southerly 
latitudes : nor should it be forgotten that the high latitude 
gives greater length of days—far more sunshine and grow- 
ing time in each 24 hours—than can be had further 
south. On the Saskatchewan in midsummer the nights are 
only four or five hours long. It thus happens that vegeta- 
tion has about as many working hours, so to speak—hours 
when sunlight is promoting growth—between seed time and 
harvest, as in the longer season but shorter days of Iowa. 
This increased ‘energy of growth has been remarkably 
manifested in some instances. The early spring wheat cul- 
tivated for forty years in the Selkirk settlement, before the 
birth of Manitoba, was originally an English winter wheat. 
More lately a winter wheat from Pennsylvania was trans- 
formed intoaspring wheat in Manitoba after a single year’s 
reproduction. The seed of a certain kind of Indian corn 
cultivated about Winnipeg was two weeks later in maturing 
when sown near St. Louis, whence it had originally been 
brought; but quickness in coming to maturity is in fact, char- 
acteristic of all the plants indigenous to the Northwest, 
and is a quality speedily acquired by imported plants—a 
point not only in agriculture, but a pretty fact for the 
evolutionist to ruminate upon. 
Furthermore, the cool moist spring checks an undue 
luxuriance of stem, and allows the strength of the grain- 
plant to be expended on the head and fruit (that is the 
grain) which is what the prairie cultivator, unsolicitous 
in regard to manure, seeks to perfect. This vigor given 
to vegetation in cold climates is in accordance with the well 
formulated law that cultivated plants yield their greatest 
product near the northernmost limit at which they will 
grow. Rice andcotton are tropical plants, yet the products 
