448 
Canadian Agriculture. 
as I have previously taken occasion to remark, the limits of the 
natural fertility of the soils have in many cases been passed. 
Even now, the average production of wheat, taken over all the 
wheat-lands of the Dominion, barely reaches 14 bushels per 
acre. How, in the Eastern Provinces, the yield of wheat has 
been steadily reduced, Professor Brown has aptly pointed out : 
" We did not stop at 16 bushels, because: (1) we could easily 
increase the productive area ; (2) grain is less expensive to 
produce ; (3) it is a lazy system of farming, and thus most 
acceptable to the many as against the few ; and (4) the product 
has always been in demand." And the same arguments would 
hold for not stopping wheat-growing when the yield had 
dwindled to 14 bushels, to 12, or even 10. And, no doubt, this 
love for wheat-growing will go a long way to explain how it is 
that eastern farmers, particularly of Ontario, rather than embark 
extensively in stock-raising, stock-fattening, and the necessary 
rotation of crops based on English and Scotch methods, prefer to 
sell their old farms and go on to the western prairies, where 
they can buy virgin soil at one-quarter to one-tenth the cost 
per acre of what they realised on their eastern holdings, and 
thus embark again upon continuous wheat-growing. By such 
means they are, moreover, enabled to establish their sons on 
separate farms, which, in the majority of cases, they could not 
do on the higher-priced lands of the East. There must further 
be taken into account the restless pioneer spirit which still 
animates the breasts of probably most Canadian farmers ; there 
is no feeling of sentiment awakened, no ancestral associations 
rudely broken, when the Canadian farmer gives up his eastern 
holding, and, impelled almost by a nomadic impulse, seeks fresh 
fields of labour in the direction of the setting sun. 
As things are now, much of the Canadian soil has ^been 
run out by continuous grain-cropping, the acreage under cereals 
being out of all proportion to the requirements of good farming. 
Approximately, the proportionate acreage of crops in the 
Eastern Provinces is, — cereals, one-half : hay, one-fourth ; pas- 
ture, one-eighth ; roots, one-sixteenth ; leguminous crops, one- 
sixteenth. Nevertheless, with a more rational system of farming, 
there would not be much difficulty in at least doubling the 
average yield of cereal crops per acre. According to the Census 
Returns of 1881, the total area of land in hoed crops of all 
kinds did not exceed 4 per cent, of the land under cultivation. 
And yet Indian corn, with its rapid and luxuriant growth, is 
an admirable crop for smothering weeds, and might well be 
employed in conjunction with roots for the cropped fallows. 
With abundant manure and extensive horse cultivation, and 
with a selection of seed suited to their northern climate, 
