The Indians of the older provinces have adopted settled habits and betaken themselves to agriculture. In Ontario they are steadily increasing in numbers and intelligence. Drunkenness diminishes; education is eagerly sought; hunting gives place to farming; the descendants of the barbarous Iroquois have been transformed into industrious and prosperous citizens. In Quebec there is also progress, but it is less rapid, and the old drunken habits of the people have not yielded so completely to the influences which surround them. The Indians of British Columbia are still very drunken and debased, and their numbers diminish rapidly. In Manitoba and the whole North-West the condition of the Indians is very hopeful. Drunkenness is almost unknown; crime is very rare; the demand for schools and for persons who can teach how to build houses and till the soil is universal and urgent. The buffalo has been the support of the North-Western Indian. Its flesh was his food, its skin was his clothing, the harness of his horse, the property by whose sale all his remaining wants were supplied. The innumerable multitudes of buffalo which frequented the plains maintained in the Indian camp a rude affluence. But the buffalo gives place before advancing civilization, and the Indians in alarm hasten to find new means of subsistence. The problem which savage occupants present to the civilized men who settle on their lands has been solved in Canada by the simple but rare device of friendly and perfectly fair dealing. The red men of Canada live contentedly under the rule of the strangers, and prove that they are able to uphold themselves by the white man’s industries. They adopt his language, often to the disuse of their own, his dress, his customs, his religion. Not only do the two races live in concord; their blood has been largely mixed. The native race is probably doomed to disappear, but this will not be the result of violence or even of neglect. The history of the Indian race in Canada will close with its peaceful absorption by the European races which possess the continent. Thirty years ago the Canadians, borrowing largely from their neighbours of the United States, perfected their common-school system. Schools adequate to the wants of the population are provided. A Board chosen by the people conducts the school business of the district. The costs are defrayed by a local tax, supplemented by a grant from the treasury of the province. In general, no fees are charged; primary education is absolutely free. The French Canadians manifest less anxiety for education than their British neighbours, and have not yet emerged from the ignorance which they brought with them from Europe, and in which they were suffered for generations to remain. In Toronto and the maritime provinces the means of education are ample, and are very generally taken advantage of by the colonists. * * * * *