65 @6e garden of @urzuda

watered with numerous springs and rivers, is formed for the most part of a rich, light, warm sandstone, with here and there somewhat richer clay areas. It is deficient in lime, requiring application of mussel mud; but it is easily worked, and responds readily to proper cultivation. Mr. ]. P. Sheldon, Professor of Agriculture at the Wilts and Hants Agricultural College, Downton, near Salisbury, who visited the Island in 1880, thus writes of it: “In some respects this is one of the most beautiful provinces in the Dominion, and it has probably the largest proportion of cultivable land. The soil generally is a red sandy loam of one character throughout, but differing in quality. On the whole, the grass land of the Island, and the character of the sward, consisting as it does of indigenous clover and a variety of finer grasses, reminded me strongly of some portions of old England. The people, too, are more English in appearance than those of any other of the provinces with the exception of New Brunswick. This is probably owing to a cooler climate, and the contiguity of the sea. Prince Edward Island is covered with a soil that is easy to cultivate, sound and healthy, capable of giving excellent crops of roots, grain and grass, an honest soil that will not fail to respond to the skill of the husbandman. The Island grows very good wheat, and probably better oats than most other parts of the Dominion. Of the former, the crops are from eighteen to thirty bushels, and of the latter twenty—five to seventy bushels per acre. Barley, too, makes a very nice crop. VVheat, at the time of my visit, was worth four shill- ings per bushel of sixty pounds, oats one shilling and ninepence per bushel of thirty-four pounds, and barley two shillings and Sixpence to three shillings per bushel of forty-eight pounds. The Island is noted for its large crops of excellent potatoes, which not uncommonly foot up to 250 bushels an acre of fine, handsome tubers. Swedes make a fine crop, not uncommonly reaching 750 bushels per acre of sound and solid bulbs."

In addition to the natural fertility of the soil, the great

facility for obtaining manure may be set down as one of the 9