302 
Canadian Agriculture. 
study, called on the wife of a well-known prairie farmer, and 
happened to mention that one of their chief objects in visiting 
the Xorth-VVest was to discover all they could about primeval 
man. " \ es," sweetly rejoined their hostess, "but don't you 
think it would be far more interesting if you turned your atten- 
tion to modern man ? " 
The Marquis of Lome gives a graphic description of the 
prairie : * — 
" For my part I never tire of the summer aspect of the plains. In the 
winter they are often desolate-looking enough ; and what landscape is not ? 
There is at all events this to be said for the winter prairie, namely, that the 
'iky is seldom only of a dull grey above it, and is oftener than in Europe of a 
bright blue, tilled with the cheei fulness of sunlight. 
•' There is one drawback in summer, and this is the universal presence of 
the mosquito; but take a day in autumn, and then see if you do not enjoy 
the prairie. If you are in the eastern parts, the long grass is nearly up to 
j'our hips as you stand in it, and its green blades are varied with ptuple 
vetches and tall asters. Your horizon is circumscribed, for ix)plar clumps, 
with their white stems trembling in the noonday mirage, are not far ofl", in 
whatever direction you look. Out of the netting of the jwplar you emerge 
into a more open world, with hardly a tree. The grasses are not so long, but 
still the lily or the sunflower is present in masses of blossom. There are marshes 
thick with tall sedge, and long tawny grass around the margin. There are 
clear pools and lakelets fringed with reed ; and in September what numbers of 
wild fowl! — swans, difficult to approach, and tall white cranes, and the small 
sand-crane in flocks. "We hear cries in the air above its, and, looking up, we 
see against a grej' cloud great white birds flapping heavil}- along. They are 
ix;licans, white except the quill-feathers ; and behind them now, but rapidly 
overtaking them, is a long string of other birds, also white, except the wing- 
feathers. These tly in waving curves, looking in the distance like rows ol 
^learls waved in the air. They are snow-geese, coming, like the pelicans, from 
the far northern breeding-grounds, and they alight on a lake near at hand, 
making a long white band on its blue water. They are worth stalking, and 
an attempt is made, but only one is killed, and the rest take the wing and 
are no more seen that day. But the ducks are tamer, and come circling back, 
and afford excellent sport. What a variety ! The most common are blue-wing 
teal, shoveller, dusky duck, and mallard. Certainly there is no easier and 
Ijetter way of having wild-fowl shooting than by a visit to the Xorth-West. 
<^nce out of Manitoba the hand swells into waves, and from each ridge a 
marvellous extent of country' is seen. The lakes are fewer, and a long jnarch 
is sometimes necessary before a good campiug-ground is found. The herbage, 
except in such spots, is poorer, and the general effect given by it is a dull grey- 
green, shading in the middle distance to grey and ochre, and then far away 
these tints become mixed with delicate pinks and cobalt blue. ' l-'ar away ?' 
Yes, indeed, the distance seems infinite. You gaze, and the intense clearness 
of the air is such that you think you have never seen so distinctly or so far 
over such wide horizons before. Plateaux, hollows, ridges and plains lie 
Ixineath you, on and on, and there is nothing to keep the eye and mind from 
the sense of an indefinite vastness. There is no special mark to arrest the 
gaze, and it wanders and wanders on to those pink and blue shades, where the 
skies, light and beautiful in tint, are joined in harmony of colour to the end- 
less swell and roll of the tminhabited world beneath them. A wonderful 
* ' Canadian Pictures,' p. 178. 
