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 travelling, these few pages shall be concluded with a plan of a very simple journey, a journey which can be strongly recommended to all who are wishing for change of scene and are somewhat bewildered in choosing a route among the innumerable places in the world which have claims on their attention.  We will imagine that a party of twenty has been made up, and that the start is from Halifax, the direction eastward, and the destination Constantinople.  The car which is timed to start at 7 a.m., is standing at rest on the sloping side, while the passengers, say fifty in number, are taking their seats in the luxurious chamber within.  The first stop is at Sydney, Cape Breton, and the car is pointed accurately