Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/795

Rh is possible for such things to be. Is it fair to the country for a man of such high standing and reputation to make such unfounded assertions? Five minutes' real consideration of the question would have convinced him that there are more than that number of acres in the province of Manitoba alone. The figures already given, which have been prepared from the most reliable available information, go to show that there are upward of seventy-five million acres of land in Canada especially adapted for the production of wheat, and this estimate is confined to those portions of the country which may be considered as essentially wheat-producing areas; and no account has been taken of the vast extent of land, not only in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and in the Northwest Territories, but also in the otherwise unnoticed provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, that is not only suitable for the production of wheat, but on which a large quantity of wheat will undoubtedly be grown, which, entering into home consumption, will increase the exportable surplus.

I am well aware that there are a number of people who will say that my figures underestimate the resources of the country, but I would rather that it were so than indulge in figures that seem too extravagant to be realized; and if, in the future, it appears that the wheat area is larger than I have stated, then so much the better for Canada. I do not mind how much evidence can be brought to increase my figures, as long as I am satisfied that they can not be truthfully reduced.

It is not intended to accuse Sir W. Crookes of deliberately misrepresenting Canada, but rather of almost criminal carelessness in the preparation of his case; but it is intended to accuse Mr. C. Wood Davis of the former offense and of intentionally garbling extracts from an official handbook issued by the Canadian Minister of the Interior in order to decry that country's wheat-bearing capabilities. By taking a line here and there which seems to serve his ends, and by leaving out everything that would have a contrary tendency, Mr. Davis, in his article in The Forum, makes it to appear that, according to the Minister of the Interior, the greater part of the Canadian Northwest is not only incapable of producing wheat, but is actually unfit for settlement, and summarizes his extracts by saying, "Available data do not show that any part of the Canadian districts named, except southern Manitoba and the eastern half of Assiniboia, is adapted to wheat culture, while they do show that over the greater part of these vast regions neither summer heats nor rainfalls are sufficient." This statement is false in every particular. The official handbook from which Mr. Davis professes to quote says of Manitoba that there are thirty-seven million acres available for