236 
Canadian Agriculture. 
of the natural historv features of the regions north and south 
of this line may be identical. Particularly is this so with 
regard to the general character of the flora, so that the following 
observations from an address of surpassing interest, on the 
Characteristics of the Xorth-American Flora," delivered by 
the veteran American botanist, Professor Asa Gray, before the 
Biological Section of the British Association at the Montreal 
meeting last year, may be appropriately quoted here : — 
" Between the woc-ied counrry of the Atlantic side of the continent and 
that of the Pacific side, lies a vast extent of plains, which are essentially wood- 
less, except where they are traversed hy motintain-chains. The prairies of 
the Atlantic States bordering the Mississippi, and of the Wiimipeg country, 
shade off into the drier and gradually more saline plains, which, with an even 
and gradual rise, attain an elevation of 5000 feet or more where they abut 
against the Kocky Motmtains. UniU these are reached (over a space from the 
All^hanies westward of about 20 degrees of longitude) the plains are un- 
broken. To a moderate distance beyond the Mississippi the country must 
have been in the main natnrally wooded. There is rainfall enough for forest 
on these acnial prairies. Trees grow fairly weU when planted ; they are 
coming up spontaneously under present opportunities ; and there is reastm for 
thinking that all the prairies east of the Mississippi, and of the Missouri up 
to Minnesota, have b^n either greatly extended or were even made treeless 
under Indian occupation and annual burnings. These prairies are flowery 
with a good number of characteristic plants, many of them evidently derived 
from the plains farther west At this season (August) the predominant vege- 
tation is of Compositae, especially of Asters and Solidagoes, and of Sunflowers, 
Silphiums, and other Helianthoid Composita;. 
" The drier and barer plains beyond, clothed with the short Buffalo-Graces, 
probably never bore trees in their present state, except as now, some Cotton- 
woods Poplars) on the margins of the lonz rivers which traverse them in 
their course from the Rocky Mountains to the MisidssippL Westward, the 
plains grow more and more saline ; and "Wormwoods and Chenopodiaceae of 
various sorts form the dominant vegetation, some of them sui generis, or at 
least peculiar to the country, others identical or congeneric with those of the 
stepr-es of Xorthem Asia. Along with this cc-mmon campestrine vegetation, 
there is a large infusion of peculiar American types, which I supjose came 
from the southward."' * 
Climate. — The essential connection between the climate of a 
country and its agriculture renders it indispensable to make 
some observations on the climate of Manitoba and the Xorth- 
West Territories, and in this particular case it is all the more 
desirable, inasmuch as considerable misapprehension and, it 
may be, prejudice exist in England on the subject. The region 
under notice is bounded on the south by latitude 49', on the 
north by latitude 60", on the east by the meridian of 95', and 
on the west by the Rockv Mountains, and it covers, in round 
numbers, an area of 66i^,(K)0 square miles. Much information 
was obtained in Captain Palliser's expedition in 1857, and many 
important facts have been subsequently established by Professor 
• * Nature,' Jan. 15, 1885, p. 254. 
