Now, if the people of Ontario were spending their winters, when not hibernating, in tramping on snowshoes or riding down declivities on toboggans, then might such sport be considered peculiarly applicable to us. To show unmistakably the great difference between the Quebec peasant, who hibernates during the winter, and the Ontario farmer, who works at the same time, look at the effort the Ontario farmer makes to rot his straw, while in many parts of Quebec straw is carefully guarded and husbanded. In Ontario it is the constant effort to get it all used up and made into manure. If we get too much open winter in Ontario, the farmer has as much as he can possibly do to get his straw worked down, because the cattle do not use up enough of it. Hence we frequently see large stacks of straw left over. In this part of Ontario it is more a question how to get the straw rotted than it is how to save it. Then, drawing the comparison between us and the land of toques, where straw is sparingly produced on soils not well farmed, and what do we want with any of that toque and snowshoe business! Mr. Grant Allen, the eminent writer, who, although born here, was an Englishman by residence and education, having revisited Canada and the United States after an absence of eleven years, took occasion some years since to give utterance to some remarks on our country in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. His remarks should never have been allowed to pass unchallenged. I cannot go into the matter very fully for fear of too great length, but I must needs touch on the more salient points, and it will be necessary for me to inscribe Mr. Allen’s words here and there as a text for my remarks. He says: “Looking at America with a geological eye, I was impressed as I had never been before with the enormous extent to which the country has suffered from the ice-sheets of the glacial period.” And after making this remark he goes on to say that England has suffered less from this great cause. Now, this remark of his refers to Canada and the United States indiscriminately, and without a doubt it is true to the letter. While I accept the statement as true, I at the same time want very distinctly to qualify it so far as Ontario is concerned. Ontario has measurably suffered from the glacial action, but it has as a whole suffered far less than any one of the other provinces or any of the northern United States, taken as a whole. I am referring to old Ontario alone, and not the new portion lately acquired to the west. Take old Ontario: The moraines have been frequent enough to give us the most alluvial soil of any country of like extent on the habitable globe. This remark does not apply to the more northerly portion of our province, which is as yet but little occupied, for we cannot controvert the fact that this portion did suffer sadly.