CANADIAN CONDITIONS. 37

Immigration is being so energetically administered,
the undoubted advantages of the Dominion are
being so well advertised, that not only are the
numbers of immigrants yearly increasing, but the
expense of obtaining each immigrant is yearly
diminishing.
Frost—The worst foe of the farmer of the North-West
 is the frost ; but it must not be assumed that
agriculture necessarily becomes impossible in high
latitudes. Mountain ranges and large sheets of
water, and, most of all, the spread of cultivation,
conspire to defeat the effects of polar geography.
The history here given of a particular frost? is an
example of this, and it is a matter of common
knowledge that the greater part of the North
American wheat belt now lies north of what in
former years was considered the most northerly
limit of wheat production. With greater settlement
 and the clearing of trees, the soil is exposed
to the warm sun, and the frost is expelled from the
ground. In the north, large tracts of land from
which the ice never melted when covered with
trees and sphagnum have been found to yield
splendid cereal crops when the trees are cut down
and the sphagnum burnt off. The ground thaws
and the small wheat seedlings get a constant supply
of water from the melting ice below, the process
continuing all through the summer.
Thus there is evidence to show that the limit of
Canadian agriculture has not yet been ascertained,
1 Frost. See Appendix.