My house on the Davenport Road was a very pleasant residence, with a fine lawn ornamented with trees chiefly planted by my own hands, and was supplied with all the necessaries for modest competence. It is worth recording, that some of the saplings--silver poplars (abeles) planted by me, grew in twelve years to be eighteen inches thick at the butt, and sixty feet in spread of branches; while maples and other hardwoods did not attain more than half that size. Thus it would seem, that our North-West prairies might be all re-clothed with full-grown ash-leaved maples--their natural timber--in twenty-five years, or with balm of Gilead and abele poplars in half that time. Would it not be wise to enact laws at once, having that object in view? I have been an amateur gardener since early childhood; and at Carlton indulged my taste to the full by collecting all kinds of flowers cultivated and wild. I still envy the man who, settling in the new lands, say in the milder climates of Vancouver's Island or British Columbia, may utilize to the full his abundant opportunities of gathering into one group the endless floral riches of the Canadian wilderness. We find exquisite lobelias, scarlet, blue and lilac; orchises with pellucid stems and fairy elegance of blossom; lovely prairie roses; cacti of infinite delicacy and the richest hues. Then as to shrubs--the papaw, the xeranthemum of many varieties, the Indian pear (or saskatoon of the North-West), spiræa prunifolia of several kinds, shrubby St. John's-wort, oenothera grandiflora, _cum multis aliis_. Now that the taste for wild-flower gardens has become the fashion in Great Britain, it will doubtless soon spread to this Continent. No English park is considered complete without its special garden for wild flowers, carefully tended and kept as free from stray weeds as the more formal parterre of the front lawn. Our wealthier Canadian families cannot do better than follow the example of the Old Country in this respect, and assuredly they will be abundantly repaid for the little trouble and expenditure required. CHAPTER XLVII. CANADIAN POLITICS FROM 1853 to 1860. In May, 1853, I sold out my interest in the _Patriot_ to Mr. Ogle R. Gowan, and having a little capital of my own, invested it in the purchase of the _Colonist_ from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie, who died December 6th, 1852. It was a heavy undertaking, but I was sanguine and energetic, and--as one of my friends told me--thorough. The _Colonist_, as an organ of the old Scottish Kirk party in Canada, had suffered from the rivalry of its Free Kirk competitor, the _Globe_; and its remaining subscribers, being, as a rule, strongly Conservative, made no objection to the change of proprietorship; while I carried over with me, by agreement, the subscribers to the daily _Patriot_, thus combining the mercantile strength of the two journals.