NATURAL HISTORY, TORONTO REGION 
assured competence by the growth of the nation’s 
wealth. One hears of push-cart men becoming semi- 
millionaires within a few years, and the stimulus of 
such tales is not lost in the telling. In Toronto, as 
in New York (Borough of Manhattan), the downtown 
landowners are mostly corporations or Jews. 
But, typical as it is in many respects, the “ ward ” 
is not all of Toronto. The backbone of the city’s 
population, its pith and marrow, are still Canadian. 
And as Canadians their interests are chiefly in the 
home life. A drive in a tally-ho, a view from the 
tower of the University or of the City Hall will con- 
vince the visitor of this fact. Few, if any, of the 
cities of America, certainly none in Europe, can show 
so many miles of comfortable and even commodious 
dwelling-houses in proportion to the population. But 
here, too, conditions are changing. Seven years ago 
there were only three apartment houses in the city. 
Now they number 300. With the great increase in 
land values, the decrease in the supply of domestics, 
and the lowness of the Ontario birthrate, such sub- 
stitutes for the true home are sure to be multiplied. 
Hitherto they seem to have had no effect in diminish- 
ing the rapidity of the city’s territorial growth. 
That growth has been guided to some extent by 
the geological conditions. The successive hill-pla- 
teaus which mark the earlier shore-lines of Lake 
Ontario formed boundaries to the north, and so the 
city till quite recently expanded east and west along 
the lake front till it extended from the Humber Bay 
26 
