90  State  Aid  to  Agriculture  in  Canada. 
another  Australian  or  East  Anglian  stallion  should  be  pur- 
chased and  be  placed  in  this  district  to  be  used  on  the 
remaining  pack  mares  that  have  not  been  purchased,  without 
fee,  and  prizes  or  premiums  should  be  offered  at  the  local 
agricultural  shows  for  their  produce. 
If  such  a scheme  be  at  once  carried  out,  the  Pack  horse  can 
be  revived  and  the  expense  entailed  would  be  but  small  as 
compared  to  the  value  of  the  breed  to  the  nation  generally  and 
the  army  in  particular. 
C.  R.  Staveley, 
Pamflete,  Lieut- Colonel. 
Holbeton,  South  Devon. 
STATE  AID  TO  AGRICULTURE  IN  CANADA. 
In  1885  the  late  Dr.  Fream  contributed  to  the  Journal  (Vol. 
46,  pp.  217,  377)  two  exhaustive  articles  on  Canadian 
agriculture.  The  present  paper  of  more  limited  scope  will 
attempt  to  describe  in  outline  the  nature  of  the  direct  aid  now 
given  to  agriculture  by  the  State  in  Canada,  including  that 
which  is  of  national  character,  as  rendered  by  the  Dominion 
Government,  and  also  the  more  local,  yet  hardly  less  important 
encouragement  which  each  of  the  provinces  affords  within 
its  own  area. 
The  Dominion  Government. 
Like  its  prototype — the  English  Board  of  Agriculture  and 
Fisheries — the  Dominion  Department  of  Agriculture  at  Ottawa 
consists  of  different  Branches,  some  of  which  have  no  direct 
connection  with  agriculture  but  come  for  convenience  under  the 
same  administration.  Another  similarity  is  that  the  Canadian 
Department  has  also  outgrown  its  original  office  accommo- 
dation. Its  Branches  are  situated  in  different  parts  of  the 
capital,  though  the  inconvenience  thus  caused  is  partially 
obviated  by  the  city’s  admirable  system  of  telephonic  com- 
munication.1 
The  Department,  as  established  at  Confederation  in  1867, 
succeeded  the  provincial  Bureau  of  Agriculture  and  Statistics, 
which  was  originally  created  at  Quebec  in  1852.  It  now 
consists  of  thirteen  Branches  under  the  Minister  of  Agriculture, 
an  office  which  for  the  last  fourteen  years  has  been  held  by 
the  Hon.  Sydney  Fisher,  who  is  well  known  to  British  agri- 
culturists. The  Deputy-Minister  (Mr.  George  F.  O’Halloran) 
1 New  buildings  for  the  accommodation  of  the  various  Government 
Departments,  now  scattered  over  the  city  of  Ottawa,  are  in  course  of  erection. 
They  will  be  600  feet  long  by  200  feet  wide,  with  six  storeys  on  one  side  and 
five  on  the  other. 
