Last year some fifty million bushels of oats were grown in the province of Quebec; and since to most persons 50,000,000 is an indefinite total, and only vaguely impressive, like 5,000,000 or 500,000,000, I may mention, for the purpose of affording the reader a standard of comparison, that in 1909 the quantity of that grain grown in Scotland—the national head-quarters of oat-cakes and porridge—was only thirty-eight million bushels. Let me quote another item from the long list of products yielded by the fraction of Quebec province that is at present under cultivation. The French-Canadians and their neighbours annually grow about seventeen million bushels of potatoes, or enough to supply the entire population of Ireland from one year’s end to another, allowing for a consumption of 2½ lbs. per week for every man, woman and child. They also grow enough tobacco (principally black and strong kinds, but including a good deal of Havana) to meet the annual requirements of over a million moderate smokers; while Quebec’s immense quantities of apples, cheese, cherries, butter, pears, pumpkins and melons also provide the statistician with much food for thought. And, while I am about it, let me give a hint or two with reference to the present mineral output of the province. Note, then, that in 1909 some three thousand miners received £270,000 as wages for wresting £459,000 worth of asbestos from the serpentine rocks of Quebec—a region which in the same year enriched the world with over a million barrels of Portland cement (representing a value of £263,000), besides noteworthy quantities of copper, graphite, marble, granite, phosphate, mica, chromite, and ochres. [Illustration: GATHERING MAPLE SYRUP IN EASTERN CANADA] [Illustration: TOBACCO GROWING, QUEBEC PROVINCE] As to the forests, they represent a vast treasury from which the lumber and pulp industries draw annually a value of about £4,000,000; nor should we forget the six thousand tons of luscious syrup tapped from the maple trees. Again, there is not an area of the earth more richly endowed with water-power; and therefore to Quebec’s manufacturing activity, which has had a brilliant beginning, no man can foresee the end.