through its deep roots phosphoric acid, potash and lime are taken from depths unreached by shallower-rooted farm crops. Experiments covering a number of years have shown conclusively that ploughing a crop of green clover under is a most effective source of fertility. It increases the store of plant food, makes the soil deeper, more mellow, and warmer, and enables it to retain its moisture. When used as a fertilizer there has been a marked increase in the yield of cats, wheat, barley, corn and potatoes.

Cattle Feeding.

There has grown up in Canada a very large and profitable trade in fat cattle, butter and cheese. In view of the fact that this interest will probably develop into immense proportions, special attention has been given at the experimental farms to this department. Experiments have been made to ascertain what breed of cows give the most milk and of the best quality, what breed of steers is best to fatten for the market with the greatest financial returns. Tests have also been made with many kinds of feed, including ensilage, roots, grass and mixed provender, to ascertain the cost of producing milk, butter, cheese or beef.

Since the pork business among farmers in some sections of the country has become a leading and important industry, careful experiments have been made, covering many years, with several breeds of swine, and with a great variety of foods. These experiments show that in the use of some

kinds of feed it has cost $6.40 to produce one hundred pounds of an increase, while during the same time and with the same number of pigs using other kinds of feed it has cost $2.33 to produce one hundred pounds of an increase. Experiments of such a nature must be of most practical value.

Poultry.

While to the farmer poultry is a profitable part of his interests, yet the questions involved are not, perhaps, so important or so numerous as in some other branches of his work. The main points are the proper care of poultry, best breeds for laying, for table use, and those that make early and rapid. growth for market. The experimental work of the farms has covered these questions, also hatching by incubator and in the nests, and by noting the best feed to increase weight.

To encourage farmers to add to the attractions of their home surroundings, experiments have been made in the cultivation of ornamental trees, shrubs, hedges and lawns; also a great variety of flowers-annuals and perennials in the open and in greenhouses have been grown. Much attention has also been given to the vegetable garden products.

Thus, through these experimental farms the farmer is furnished, in the many questions that interest him, with reliable information, which it would be impracticable for him to obtain for himself. Ottawa.

As clear as amber, fine as musk,

Is the life of those who, pilgrim wise, Move hand in hand, from dawn to dusk, Each morning nearer Paradise.

Oh, not for them shall angels pray! They stand in everlasting light, They walk in Allah's smile by day, And nestle in His heart by night.

-Aldridge.

as hard work, in the lives of the threshing crew. It awaits the sympathetic pen of such novelists as have exploited the mines and the foothills.

We are all familiar with the picture of a great number of reaping machines in the immense fields. After reaping, the wheat is then gathered into great stacks, everything being on an immense scale. A goodly number of threshing machines and their crews then invade the field. In some localities the wheat is not stacked, but simply threshed from the stooks. The machines have traction engines of twenty-five horse-power.

Usually four men accompany the

The

machine to do the pitching. Doukhobors fill these places very acceptably. They are great, sturdylimbed fellows, and capable when it is not a question of entrusting them with horses or machinery. Six men Six men and teams accompany each machine to draw in. Another important figure is the waterman with his tanks on wheels, making his way to the nearest slough. He has two tanks, one of which he leaves by the machine while he goes with the other for water.

But the really important men about the machine are the feeders. They are the heroes of the gang. To be a good feeder is the ambition of many a young North-Wester. There are three of them. Two feed the machine with sheaves, cutting their bands. The third feeder keeps the machine oiled and attends to the belts,

the sieves, the elevators, occasionally "spelling" one of the other men, for feeding is tough work.

Attached to the machines is a device known as the wind-stacker, a long tube, cylindrical or oblate in section, inside which are revolving fans. By this the straw is tossed out in an immense symmetrical stack. These wind-stackers were invented and are manufactured by two Manitoba farmers.

An automatic device attached to the side of the machine, as shown in our picture, is the high-bagger. By this the grain is lifted up, weighed, a bushel at a time, then let fall down a long chute, from which it is dropped into a bag held by a farmer standing in his waggon. It is then ready to be driven to the elevator of the C. P. R. and shipped eastward.

Before we follow it through the

changes of transportation, however, the threshers' crew is worthy of more than passing note. Their last act before their very late supper is to fire the great stacks of straw. Like beacon fires in the gloaming, hundreds of them flame out all at once across the miles and miles of the harvest plains.

It has been a long day of toil that the thresher has had, from the first streak of light in the east till the last shadows have deepened into night. The thresher is among the few men who really do work "from sun to sun." And with the long twilight of the North-West the hours of darkness are few.

It is an unwritten law among the threshers never to wash till night. And between dust and perspiration they present a rather funny sight with their blue eyes rolling in their grimy faces.

Supper and the cleaning-up process take considerable time. But in spite of wearied limbs, the joke and the

laugh flow freely, for the threshers are a jolly crew. They eat heartily, sleep soundly, and lead a merry life.

The farmers' daughters as a rule are not forgetful to put on their best aprons and ties, and to look like ministering angels as they feed the hungry crew. The meal ended, the threshers retire to their waggon caboose for the smoke and the joke and the final turning in. The caboose is lighted with lanterns, has a stove in it and bunks all around. Often there are as many as seven nationalities in one of these cabooses, English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, French, German and Doukhobors. But all, as a rule, speak English, even though imperfectly. the caboose at night, sitting with their pipes, or chewing the quid of tobacco, they often relate interesting reminiscences of their motherlands. They sing songs and crack jokes, not always the most delicate, it is true.

In

In these crews one sometimes finds young men from our colleges saving up their expenses for the following

winter. We remember one of our medical students in his senior year who could tell interesting experiences from his previous summer spent as an engineer on one of these threshing engines. Such young men acquire a knowledge of life that is a worthy supplement to that gained in our schools.

After the mechanism of the threshing machine, that of the elevator is the most important in the handling of the wheat. To those who know nothing of the inner workings of the elevator, there is always a something of mystery in the great dark structures looming up against the sky. The mystery is increased when one sees them in their isolation on the broadstretching prairie, where they loom up quite frequently along the line of the C. P. R.

The waggon-load of bags, in which the wheat has been placed by the automatic high-bagger on the threshing machine, is driven to one of these elevators. The waggon is

drawn up on the flat scales, where it is weighed. The driver then moves up beside the elevator, where the wheat is dumped from the waggon into the pocket at the side of the building. From this pocket it goes crashing down a chute into an iron boot at the base. Here it is caught by an endless leather band or belt, to which are affixed metal cups, the whole actuated by machinery.

From the boot at the foot of the elevator the grain is raised in these cups to a height of perhaps fifty feet. Here the belt makes a sharp turn in its circuit, and the cups are completely inverted. The wheat is tumbled down a long spout into a bin below. Here its adventures end for a while. It lies waiting till a C. P. R. freight train draws up and the prison-house of the bin is exchanged for that of the C. P. R. train. It is then carried eastward to Port Arthur.

Here the train of box-cars runs into the corrugated iron-covered building known as the working-house. In