AGRICULTURE. 325

the last few years, and which may be attributed principally to the force of example, set by a few of the old settlers, chiefly the loyalists and Lowland Scotch, and by an acquisition of industrious and frugal settlers from Yorkshire, in England, and from Dumfries-shire and Perthshire, in Scotland.

The principal disadvantage connected with this island, and in fact the only one of any importance, is the length of the winters, which renders it necessary to have a large store of hay for supporting live stock ; and which also, from the abrupt opening of spring and summer, abridges the season for sowing and planting. These disadvantages are, however, felt with equal severity in Prussia, and over a great part of Germany, where the people employed in agricul- tural pursuits form the majority of the inhabitants.

About a ton of hay, with straw for each, taking large and small together, is requisite to Winter black cattle properly. The Winter season has also many advantages—wood and firing poles are easily brought from the forests, over the smooth slippery roads made by the frosts and snows, and distances are shortened by the bays and rivers being frozen over. The. ground is also considered to be fertilized by deep snows and frosts; and there are few farmers who consider the winter an impediment to agri- culture, otherwise than the spring opening so sud- denly upon them, and the astonishing quickness of vegetation, leaving them only five or six weeks for preparing the soil, and sowing and planting. When we consider, however, that the autumn and fall are