Country Life
WHY SETTLEMENTS FAIL. - Never has the literature of farming enjoyed a wider vogue than to-day, the day when, to quote the title of the most popular of French farm books : La terre . . meurt. Far- mers' Glory leads and has this advantage that it gives companion pictures of Canada and England. The latest book, so far as Canada goes, is even better, and though it deals wholly with Canada challenges the same comparison and contrast : even in the title : The Outcasts of Canada (by Edward Fitz-Gerald Fripp. Blackwood. 7s. ed.), with sub- title " Why Settlements Fail." The singularly real and vivid experience of a young Englishman and his wife in the fruit area of British Columbia are recorded of a district familiar to me ; and glorious though the district was, I marvelled at the time, and now marvel more, at the price compared with England. One planted orchard—to shift the district a little—was valued at £250 an acre ; and irrigation and other fees were over £3 an acre ! There is plenty of good fruit land in England to be had at £20 an acre or less, and the taxes are low. Even planted orchards in the best areas do not approach the prices of the remote Okanagan valley, where markets are thousands of miles away.
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