More important than all other industries put together is farming. The extent of this industry may be judged from the fact that each year from 1900 to 1908 from 20,000 to 40,000 homesteads were taken up. The usual size of these homesteads is 160 acres, and the acreage thus newly under cultivation varied during the eight years from one to twelve million square miles a year. In 1907 alone the new farms represented an immigration {423} of 105,420 persons. The total number of farms in the Dominion in 1908 was estimated at 600,000, representing a population directly dependent upon farming of over three millions. The principal crops in the prairie provinces are oats, wheat, and barley. The total crop of wheat in 1908 was about 130,000,000 bushels, of oats 270,000,000, and of barley 50,000,000. In Ontario, Quebec, and the maritime provinces, dairying, fruit-growing, hog-raising--for bacon and ham--and mixed farming have taken the place of grain crops. In 1908 Canada had gained a strong position in the markets of Great Britain for cheese, butter, and canned goods, a position which was largely due to the work of the Dominion Agricultural Department in providing cold storage for farm products on the railways and steamers, and also to the educational work which the Department had been steadily pushing among the farmers. The Dominion is rich in metals and minerals, and mining is an important industry in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia. The largest coal-fields of Canada are in Cape Breton and in Pictou and Cumberland Counties, Nova Scotia, from which over five million tons of coal are mined each year. There are no coal measures between New Brunswick and Manitoba, and the lignite beds of Manitoba yield a much less valuable coal than that of Nova Scotia. The coal area of the Rocky Mountains, though not so large as that of the maritime provinces, yields the best coal so far found in the Dominion. The centre of this formation is at the Crow's Nest Pass. {424} There is another coal area on the Pacific Coast in the neighbourhood of Nanaimo and in Queen Charlotte's Island. The total amount of coal mined in the Dominion in 1908 was 10,510,000. Besides coal, there are in Canada rich deposits of iron ore, lead, nickel, copper, silver, and gold, and the non-metallic minerals include petroleum, asbestos, and corundum. Diamonds have been found in Quebec in a formation not unlike the diamond fields of Kimberley. Gold is found chiefly in the Klondike country and in British Columbia; but some gold is also obtained from Nova Scotia, and a fair amount from Ontario and Quebec.