BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



barley, potatoes and peas. Their surprise turned to contempt 

 when the wheat "choked with weeds and failed to ripen." 

 In derision they called the colonists "jardiniers." For two 

 years in succession wheat failed to make a crop, and no 

 one would have predicted at that time that those northern 

 plains were to become one of the most important wheat- 

 producing areas in the world. 



The failure was due, in part, to a lack of knowledge of 

 the best methods of preparing the soil and the right time 

 to sow. The seed did not germinate properly, and con- 

 sequently the fields were foul with weeds. But the most 

 serious handicap was the lack of varieties properly adapted 

 to the severe conditions of summer drought and of early 

 fall freezes. The wheat of British origin withered in the 

 summer heat and grew too slowly to ripen before the first 

 fall frosts, which come early in that part of Canada. 



In the United States wheat sown in the fall is cut from 

 June to August. Farmers are sometimes anxious about 

 midsummer drought but never fear that the crop will be 

 damaged by frost at harvest time. North of the Canadian 

 border wheat must be sown in the spring; and the plants 

 start to head in August and ripen in September. A crop that 

 would make forty or fifty bushels of grain, if only it had a 

 few more days in which to ripen, may be ruined by freezing 

 before it is ready to cut, or snow may flatten it to the 

 ground, leaving it hopelessly beyond the power of any 

 harvesting machinery to gather. 



The need for quick-growing, early ripening wheat has 

 been so urgent that Canadian farmers have always been on 

 the lookout for new varieties that would give them good 

 yields as well as the quality of grain that the foreign 

 markets demanded. In time, by that slow process of trial 

 and failure, they gradually collected those wheats that 

 ripened in most of the years and produced a profitable crop. 

 One of the most widely grown of these early varieties was 



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