Presbyterian congregations in the small town of New Glasgow, and Rev. Mr. MacLeod, believing that his labours were more required elsewhere, accepted a call to his present charge, into which he was inducted on the 19th of July, 1871. His labours in this field have been crowned with a fair measure of success. On two different occasions additions of over one hundred and twenty, mostly young persons, were made to the communion roll. Mr. MacLeod is at present clerk of the presbytery. He has held that position for twenty-one years in the Presbytery of Prince Edward Island, and for seven years in the Presbytery of Halifax, Nova Scotia. * * * * * =Sifton, Hon. John Wright=, Brandon, Manitoba, was born in the township of London, county of Middlesex, Ontario, on the 10th August, 1833. He is the youngest son of Bamlet and Mary Sifton, who came from the county of Tipperary, Ireland, in 1832, and settled in London township. His ancestors on both sides were English. He received his education in the public and grammar schools of London. Up until 1860 he devoted his time to farming and other business, when he removed to Oil Springs, in Lambton county, and engaged in the oil business as producer and refiner. Here he purchased a large tract of oil lands immediately surrounding the famous gum beds, and afterwards sold them to an American company. This was the first foreign company that invested in Canadian oil property, and they continued to develop the resources of their territory until the enormous yield of oil at Petrolia made it impossible for them to successfully compete with this more productive locality. In 1870, Mr. Sifton removed to Paris, Brant county, with the object of having his children educated at the grammar school there; and in 1872, in company with his brother, contracted for and built forty miles of the track of the Canada Southern Railway. In 1873, he moved to London, and was appointed secretary of the Oil Association, and this office he held until the association ceased operations. In 1874, in company with two other gentlemen, whose interests he soon after bought out, he was awarded the contract for building and maintaining for five years a telegraph line from the city of Winnipeg to Fort Pelley, and clearing the track a hundred feet wide, for a distance of about three hundred miles, for the then contemplated Canadian Pacific Railway. Although this contract, when it was entered into, appeared to be one likely to give a fair profit, yet it afterwards turned out the opposite way. The fearful wet seasons of 1876, ’77, and ’78, flooded the country for forty miles east of Lake Manitoba, and sixty miles west along the line to, in some places, a depth of six feet, making it impossible to keep the line up, and as the Government refused to make any allowance for this, the loss was very great. Some idea may be formed of the difficulty of performing