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136 CHINA MISSION YEAR BOOK.lowed in the last three years, with the result that wenow have a force of forty-four missionaries, of whom tenare devoting themselves to evangelistic work, six toeducational work, five to medical work, three to presswork, and the balance, numbering twenty, are still students of the native languageRev. T. K. Egerton Shore, the assistant secretaryof Foreign Missions, during a year s missionary tour ofthe world, was able to spend over five months in China,more than two months of which were spent visitingstations and out-stations of our own Mission fieldIt is accepted among the seven churches that havemissions in West China, that the Canadian Church isresponsible for the largest share of that work. Realizingthis responsibility, our Mission Council of West Chinalast year delegated to certain members of the Councilthe responsibility of investigating conditions withinother parts of West China, where it was understood thatlittle or no missionary work was being done. As aresult the Mission looks to opening work in Yunnan andKweichowThere has since come to our Mission Board fromthe official authorities of the London Missionary Society,England, an offer to transfer to our church and Missionthe work and territory which they have been operatingin a very limited way for the past twenty years in thesouth-west portion of the province of Szechwan, almostadjacent to our present Mission field. (Since consummated.) ....The amount of effort put forth in the number ofmembers received, in the number of workers, both nativeand foreign, on the field this year, far surpasses allprevious records. But, even more, it has been a yearfraught with rich conceptions of new responsibilities andthe self-consciousness of a new force within the Missionitself. For this reason the most significant event ofthe year was the First General Convention of our WestChina Mission, held in Kiating, in July, 1908