426 
Canadian Agriculture. 
This Province has no Bureau of Agriculture, and the only 
legislation of agricultural interest has dealt with an Act to 
regulate the management of the Government Stock Farm, the 
Domestic Animals Act, 1878, and an Act to prevent the spread 
of the potato bug, 1883. There is a considerable export trade 
in horses, cattle, and sheep to other parts of Canada and to the 
New England States. Perhaps the most peculiar feature in 
the farming of the island is the extent to which the mussel-mud 
of the rivers is used as manure. The mud is obtained by 
a dredging machine, worked by horse-power, on the ice over 
the beds of nearly all the rivers where oyster and mussel 
deposits occur. These deposits are from ten to thirty feet thick, 
and are made up of oysters, mussels, decayed fish, and seaweed. 
Used as a fertiliser, this material acts promptly and effectively, 
and produces very large crops of hay. Improved farms can be 
bought here at about 4/. per acre. 
New Brunswick. — The Province of New Brunswick is not 
much more than half as large as England. Its extreme length, 
north to south, is 230 miles, and its greatest breadth is 190 
miles; but it has a coast line 500 miles long, and indented with 
spacious bays and inlets. The coast upon the Bay of Fundy 
is rocky and sterile, except at the head of the bay, where are 
the rich Acadian marsh or dyke lands, which are referred 
to at length under the head of Nova Scotia. Along the shores 
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence the coast is low and sandy. The 
surface of the Province is undulating, densely wooded, and 
nowhere marked by any considerable elevations, though low 
ranges of hills surrounded by fertile valleys and table-lands are 
not uncommon. Besides being a farming country, New Bruns- 
wick is noted for its lumber trade, its fisheries, and its ship- 
building industry. It was originally settled by the United 
Empire Loyalists, " the vanquished champions of a lost cause — 
the victims of a political idea which was unsuccessful,-^and 
they turned to the wilderness and founded new communities, in 
which are now manifested the principles of rational liberty 
which were present in their minds. . . . Shipload after ship- 
load of refugees landed on the rugged shore of the harbour 
of St. John. Many succumbed to the hardships of the first 
winter, with scanty shelter and scarceness of food, ' With death 
swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith 
overthrown.' But there their descendants remain to this day, 
the most vigorous, the most courageous and most indomitable 
of the people who inhabit the Dominion of Canada." And yet, 
somehow, New Brunswick, notwitlistanding its great natural 
advantages, its fine maritime position, its many noble rivers, 
its fertile soil, and its excellent system of railways, does not 
