erful rapidity. Thus it happened that we came to
take the lead among nations and have been able to keep foremost
ever since, though with our 93,000,000 we are not by any means
the largest nation.

The improved hygienic conditions under which we live have had the
effect of very largely increasing the population. Our forefathers
in their wisdom spent large sums of money in attracting immigrants
to our shores, but it did not occur to them to increase the
population by preventing people from dying. Very few persons die
now, except from old age, and the tremendous and almost incredible
mortality of old times among infants is stopped, consequently the
death rate is very low, and the excess of births over deaths very
great. There are only three doctors to each large city, and they
are subsidised by government or the town councils, because there
are not enough sick people from whom they could make a living as
of yore. The good health of the public is also in some measure
due to the fact of our scientific men having been able, since a
few years past, to gain a good deal of control over the weather.
By means of captive balloons, currents of electricity between
the higher atmosphere and the earth are kept passing regularly.
By other electrical contrivances as well as these, rain can now
be nearly always made to come at night and can be prevented from
falling during the day. Hurricanes and desolating storms are
also held very much under control.

Our contrasts are now drawing to a close. Enough has been said to
make it plain to the slowest intellect among us, what is gained
by having been born in the twentieth century, instead of in the
nineteenth, and by being born a Canadian, instead of to any other
land. There can hardly be to-day such a woeful creature as a
Canadian who does not realise and is not proud of the grandeur of
his heritage. Our race, owing to the splendid hygienic and social
conditions that have been dilated upon, is one of the healthiest
and strongest on the face of the earth. We are not demoralized
or effeminated by the luxury and abundance which are ours, but
elevated rather, and strengthened by the very magnificence and
opulence of our circumstances, and by the perfect freedom, under
healthful restraint, which we enjoy through the community's
strong, vigorous, moral and intellectual tone.

As there is nothing more wonderful about the present age, or more
characteristic of the times, than our mode of travell