than at first. The losses of sheep during severe blizzards had at times been heavy, and though there was no foot-rot and the grass seemed of a very dry nourishing quality, I could not see how in this country sheep-farming on a large scale was going to compete with Australia or Argentina. The weather whilst I was in this district was dry, bracing and pleasant, with a cold wind at times, bright sun, and slight frost at night. Very little rain falls in summer, and from the observations which had been made, I found that in the last twenty months there had never been enough at once to saturate the ground after the snow melted, whilst the dry air and sun very quickly evaporate any surface moisture.
I went to one or two of the other farms of the Canadian Agricultural Company, and at one, where the hoggs were being herded, I arranged to purchase 400 ewe hoggs at two and a quarter dollars a head free on board the cars at Swift Current in July; the wool to be shorn at my cost and credited to me. This was an experiment to see how these sheep would do in England. They arrived in August in very fair condition, with a loss of only three during the long journey, and were one of the last lots of sheep which were admitted without being slaughtered. Half of them went to a friend in the Cotswold Hills and did very badly—as I think, from want of management and suitable food; the remainder, which I divided between a grass farm in Essex and Colesborne, did very well. I fatted some on roots, and I think these paid the best. Some I wintered on grass and sold fat in the following summer, and some I bred from. I do not think that, if store sheep were to be again admitted from Canada, as it is possible they may be if store sheep were dear in England, I would care to buy any which had merino blood in them, as the mutton of all these sheep retained the peculiar woolly flavour which merino mutton has, and was not liked either by my own household or by the butchers who bought it. It seems remarkable that this flavour should not be eradicated by two crosses of English blood and a grass feeding in England, but such was the case, the sheep fed on roots having least of this woolly taste.
After seeing all that was necessary at Swift Current I went on to a station called Crane Lake, which was the principal cattle and horse ranch of the Canadian Agricultural Company, but as at this season most of the cattle were on the range at some distance and could not be rounded up for inspection without much trouble, I was unable to estimate their number. I saw the English bulls, some Hereford, some Shorthorn, and some Polled Angus, which had been imported at great cost and had survived three or four winters in the country. The cross with Hereford and Polled Angus were said to be the best beef cattle, but from what I could learn the country was not so suitable for wintering*as the more sheltered country near Calgary, where the most successful cattle ranches in the North- West are situated. The horses were of a very mixed type; stallions of various English breeds had been used on native mares without much judgment, and though there was a fair sale for horses of a heavy enough type for ploughing and hauling, yet the lighter, smaller and better bred horses were almost unsaleable in the North-West at this time. The fact was that the breeding of all kinds of stock had been carried on in the
