CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERMANENT REGION. 
275 
never troubled with this grievous pest, have not, and cannot well have, 
any just conception of the magnitude of its devastations, and are con- 
sequently without due appreciation of the importance of the subject." 
It is with a view of ascertaining the feasibility and practicability of 
the last three methods there referred to that we have endeavored to get 
more accurate knowledge of the limits and character of the Permanent 
breeding-grounds, whence the destructive swarms emanate, so as to 
place facts rather than surmises before our readers. In this attempt 
we have been made fully aware of the difficulties which the problem 
presents, and to modify somewhat the views previously expressed ; but 
while the difficulties in some portions of the country are practically in- 
surmountable, yet, for a large portion of the country affected, especially 
the vast plains and prairie regions between the mountains on the one 
hand and the Mississippi and North Saskatchewan on the other, it is 
within man's power largely to avoid in the future the immense losses that 
have hitherto been sustained. The destruction of the eggs by plowing 
or harrowing may be advantageously carried on and stimulated by boun- 
ties in exceptional cases, especially iu the Sub-permanent region, but does 
not admit of any general carrying out on a large scale; so that we need 
add nothing further here beyond what has been said on this score in 
Chapter II (pp. 25, 26, 30), to which the present chapter is largely sup- 
plementary. 
In what way, then, can the national government help to bring about 
the desired result? There are, it seems to us, seven ways in which 
government action is possible, viz : 1. By encouraging settlement ; 2. By 
encouraging the building of railroads ; 3. By broad schemes of irriga- 
tion ; 4. By guarding the present timber and encouraging the planting 
of forests; 5. By judicious burning; G. By a permanent system of obser- 
vations and warnings ; 7. By co-operation with the Dominion Govern- 
ment in these various measures. 
SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERMANENT REGION AND THE 
PROPORTION OF LAND IN IT UPON "WHICH THE VEGETATION IS 
SUSCEPTIBLE OF BEING BURNED. 
A consideration of the surface characteristics of this Western country, 
including soil and vegetation, will greatly help to intelligent discussion of 
either of the above propositions, and particularly of the fourth. To this 
end we have had prepared, in six separate parts, the large map (I) which 
indicates, as fully as present knowledge permits, the character of the 
vegetation in the region in question, and more particularly that which is 
sufficiently dense and luxuriant to permit of being burned over. The 
dividing lines between the probable breeding-grounds and the land that 
is grass-covered, as well as those between this last, the semi-desert and 
the desert land must needs, in many cases, be more or less arbitrary as 
they shade into each other, and the map cannot, eyen in those parts 
where every mile is familiar to us, be more than approximately correct. 
