I had very foolishly hired two Irish emigrants, who had not been longer in Canada than myself, and of course knew nothing either of chopping, logging, fencing, or, indeed, any work belonging to the country. The consequence of this imprudence was, that the first ten acres I cleared cost me nearly 5 pounds an acre[2]—at least 2 pounds more than it should have done. Experience is often dearly bought, and in this instance the proverb was fully verified. [2] The usual price for clearing land, and fencing it fit for sowing, is, for hard wood, from eleven to twelve dollars per acre; for evergreen, such as pine, hemlock, cedar, or where that kind of timber predominates, from twelve to fourteen dollars per acre. There is no fixed price for swamp. I found chopping, in the summer months, very laborious. I should have underbrushed my fallow in the fall, before the leaves fell, and chopped the large timber during the winter months, when I should have had the warm weather for logging and burning, which should be completed by the first day of September. So, for want of experience, it was all up-hill work with me. This was the season for musquitoes and black flies. The latter are ten times the worse of the two. This happened to be a bad fly year, and I, being a new comer, was nearly devoured by them. Luckily, they do not last more than a month, and it is only before rain that they are so very annoying. I have seen children whose necks were one mass of sores, from the poisonous nature of their bite: sheep, calves, and foals, are sometimes killed by them. Nor is this, indeed, an unfrequent occurrence. It must be, however, borne in mind that, as the country is cleared up, and the woods recede, the flies disappear. In the clearings along the front townships, the flies are not more troublesome than they are in England. The farm on which I now reside used to swarm terribly with flies, lying, as it does, near the water; but, for the last three years, it has been entirely free from them, especially from the black flies.[3]