d no good technical dictionary at hand to refer
to.

The present age is most prone to this false estimate of learning and to
public scientific display. If science, true science, yields to it,
learning will very soon vanish from the face of the earth again, and
nothing but monkish lore and the dark ages return.

There is a vast field open for research in Canada: it is yet a virgin
soil, both as respects its moral and its physical cultivation.
Therefore, plain facts are the best, and those made as level to the eye
as possible; for the amusing mistakes which a would-be learned man
makes, after a cursory perusal of anything scientific, only subject him
to silent derision.

A very old casual acquaintance of mine, a sort of man holding a rather
elevated rank, but originally from the great unwashed, who had risen by
mere chance, aided by a little borough influence, was talking to me one
day about some property of his in Western Canada, which he fancied had
rich minerals upon it. Accordingly, he had taken a preliminary Treatise
on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse
learnedly. "My land," quoth he, "is Silesia, and has a great bed of
sulphuret of pyrites." The poor gentleman, who had a vast opinion of
himself and always contradicted everybody about everything, meant that
his soil contained a deal of silica, and that iron pyrites was abundant
in it.

The importance of the annual migration from Britain is best evidenced by
the representation of the chief emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined.

In all the great sea-ports of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there are
emigrant agents appointed by the government, to whom application should
always be made for information, by every emigrant who has not the
advantage of friends in Canada to receive and guide him; and these
gentlemen prevent the trouble, expense, loss of time, and fraud, to
which the poor settlers are subjected by the crimps and agents, with
whom every sea-port abounds.

On their arrival in Canada, if ignorant of their way, they should apply
at Quebec to the government principal agent, who is stationed there for
the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice
or passage, according to the nature of the case.

It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at
first, for this rage causes distress, and ends frequently by their being
kidnapped into settling in the United States.

If, however, they a