resources of the Island. They may have no crown lands, no timber, no mines, but they are now beginning to develop these three F's, farms, furs and fish. You have heard a good deal in the papers about the black fox farming on the Island, and I suppose you have read that with the same interest and curiosity with which you have read about some great mining speculation in the West or a land boom on the British Columbia coast. There has been more or less speculation, necessarily there must be; but I want to tell you this that there is a sane, sound business development of fur farming down on Prince Edward Island that is just as substantial as any other industry that I know of in Canada to-day. Look over the papers and read the reports and what do you find? That furs have been advancing in price more rapidly and steadily than almost any other thing that human beings produce. The world is demanding to-day more and more furs and apparently is willing to pay for them; and the industry has been developed down there on the Island apparently at the opportune time. About four years have gone by since the first company organized, and to-day they have over two hundred companies engaged in the business on the Island, with a capitalization of fifteen million dollars, and stock on hand worth more than all the other live stock on the Island. It has spread over into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Of course, if you are going into the business be careful; you will get wild-catted there just the same as in anything else. There is the imitation article as well as the genuine, but this will in time be eliminated. There is the real, sane, substantial basis as well as the counterfeit. Any man that goes in with his eyes shut deserves to lose. If you want to know more about it read the Report of the Conservation Commission, and read the report laid on the table at Ottawa the other day by the Agricultural Committee. This fur farming has brought about two extraordinary things. When I was down there last summer I was told the Prince Edward Island people are a most careful people. My informant said, "Every farmer on the Island has a bank account, and the average bank account of a depositor in Prince Edward Island is higher

than in any other province." A farmer on the Island had $10,000 drawing interest at 3 per cent. He decided he would make an improvement on his farm that required $2,000. Do you think he would touch that $10,000? Not at all; it was contrary to his strict bringing up. He would borrow $2,000 and pay 6 per cent. interest. Why? Because he had to pay it back. That is what I was told down there. They were so conservative. These slow-going easterners have wakened up. The fox farmer has given them a new outlook. The only thing we hope for is that it will not make them too speculative. They do not borrow the money any more; they have found they can take the money and make more for themselves out of it than by allowing the bank to use it and hand three per cent. to them. They have got stirred up. They have even begun to talk about manufacturing establishments on the Island. You might travel the Island from one end to the other without being able to find a single establishment that might be called a manufacturing establishment. Now they are beginning to talk about them, and the latest industry, which is an ally of this fur farming, which is beginning and which may amount to a great deal, is the producing of Persian lamb. If you want to read a story full of romance and interest, get a copy of the New York Times of January 18th, 1914; you will find a full page article, illustrated, on the Karakul sheep, and the production of Persian lamb. The article is written by Dr. C. C. Young, who is in Ottawa at present getting letters of introduction to the British Consulate in St. Petersburg, and is about to leave on his third trip to Siberia and Turkestan with a view to acquiring further knowledge for the production of Persian lamb. They have founded a company on the Island. Dr. Young is a Russian; "Young" is not his name at all; when he left Russia he dropped his name and changed it over to C. C. Young. I told him he was all right about the first part, the initials, but I was not quite so sure about the other. He started down in Mexico but had rough treatment and so came to Texas, but did not get along very well. Meanwhile in Prince Edward Island the farmers had begun to draw their

money out of the bank and to make thirty and forty per cent. interest on it. Young started breeding these Karakul sheep down in Texas, and the fur farmers on the Island heard about it and said, "Nothing is too good for Prince Edward Island," and they went after it and they told him what they were doing, and he said, "These are the men I want to get behind me," and they formed a company on the Island, and now he is off on his third tour to Siberia and Bokhara to see how things are getting along there.

As to fish: Have you eaten real Malpeque oysters in Toronto? If you have you never want to eat oysters of any other kind, the most deliciously flavoured oyster in the world. Two years ago the Island got possession of the waters from the Dominion Government and Premier Matheson thought he saw another resource that should be developed, and they have taken all the bays that cut into the Island and have begun to survey them, and you can go down there and pick out a twenty-acre square of water and the land under it, and by paying the Government so much per acre you can get a lease for growing oysters, provided you do it under their regulations and grow them in their way and do not deplete the beds; a rational, sane method of carrying on business, and it looks as though they were going to develop an enormous industry there on the coasts of the Island in connection with oysters. Of course there is always trouble in everything; if you were to go down there you would never adopt the plan that some of them have of going down to Cape Cod and getting a few hundred barrels of oysters and dipping them into the bay and leaving them a while, and then dipping them up again and shipping them to Montreal and Toronto as Malpeque oysters. They are getting on with oysters, and I think with Government inspection and supervision we may expect a wonderful industry on that line.

Farms, furs and fish! There is a great future before the little Island. They have wakened up from a long sleep. They have got the money, and what they lack in that regard the people of the West are apparently prepared to give them.

As to the other province with the different condition and different soils. The Island has no mountains. Unfortunately at one time somebody called British Columbia a sea of mountains. In the south that is applicable, but in the north as the valleys widen and the Peace River Valley stretches into the province, you realize that there are also prairie lands and great plateaus that must mean something in the future development of that country. Hitherto fruit in the Okanagan and other valleys, and butter making down in the rich Fraser valley and in the delta, have been the two mainstays of agriculture, but now that the Grand Trunk Pacific has gone in by Tete Jeune Cache, and the provincial government is pushing its railroads up from the south, they are beginning to open up a country the possibilities of which are almost beyond comprehension. There is a country with enormous stretches, millions and millions of acres of land. The warm moist air of the Pacific is able to come through the mountains as they are far enough apart; so that instead of having the semi-arid irrigable country of Southern Alberta, we have a well watered country and a mild climate. The climate is all right, the soil is all right, and if you look for the vegetation you will see the natural growth of grass and wild peas, in some places almost up to the backs of the ponies as they go through. Nature has endowed Canada with many areas in Central and Northern British Columbia that some day will mean a great deal for us. The great prairie country coming in from the Peace River will grow wheat, and the broad valleys will grow grass and grain and fodder for the live stock, and we may expect out of that country ultimately to get a large portion of the meat and dairy products of the West. Wheat, you say, away up there? Three hundred miles north of Edmonton the Dominion Government Department of Agriculture has an experimental farm at Fort Vermilion; it is seven hundred miles north of the United States boundary, as far north of Edmonton as Edmonton is from the border, and there they have had magnificent crops of wheat for the past six years. Only once was anything touched by frost. They have had better results at Fort Vermilion than they

have had at some of the experimental farms three or four hundred miles further south. There are reasons for all that; I have not time to go into them. I simply give you that to illustrate the fact that it is not a question of remoteness nor northerliness, but a question of the influence of the warm air currents coming in from the Pacific Ocean and modifying the climate of that whole section. British Columbia has only a moderate population of 392,000, less than the city of Toronto. She has 249 million acres of land, she has resources in her fisheries, in her forests, in her lands, and in her mines, that probably are unequalled by any other province in the Dominion, and the question is what she is going to do with them. They have a few enterprising people out there; they are people who think in millions. I will just make reference to two lines along which they are seeing the results of their thinking in millions. Last year the province of British Columbia expended six to eight million dollars in the construction of highways. I would not like to tell you how many millions they have put into, or guaranteed, in their railways under construction. Six or eight millions in highways, the finest highways on the continent, built for all time, not like some highways we have seen built this year to be torn up next year and to be rebuilt the following. They are catering to a special class; they propose that the tourists of the continent can go there and drive through and over the mountains and along the sea coast and enjoy themselves, because they realize that probably the most profitable crop any country can raise is a crop of tourists. The other line along which they are doing big things is in connection with the University of British Columbia. First of all they decided it was time they should lay plans for the building of a provincial university, and so they set apart a site. Ultimately they selected two hundred and fifty acres at Point Grey. Those of you who may be familiar with Vancouver need not have any explanation; others perhaps would like to know what that signifies. It is practically one of the suburbs of Vancouver; a magnificent road goes out to it and the Marine Drivę skirts it, and there is water in front of it, and beyond and above