| SAUNDERS ] EXPERIMENTS IN PLANT BREEDING 117 
Fife, earlier in ripening, more rust-resisting, and more productive. 
Red Fife is an excellent wheat which produces a flour unsurpassed 
in quality, hence it would be unwise to do anything which would tend 
to lessen the interest in that variety, until it is proven that we have 
other sorts equally good as to quality, associated with advantages 
in earliness and productiveness. It should, however, be borne in 
mind that in the growing of wheat there is constant self-fertiliza- 
tion, and this “in and in” breeding may sooner or later cause deteri- 
oration. The Red Fife has, fortunately, maintained its vigour and 
excellent quality in the Canadian North-west for many years and as 
yet does not show any signs of deterioration. Hence, in the meantime, 
effort is made by careful selection and cultivation to grow every year 
on the western experimental farms considerable quantities of this 
valuable sort of the purest and best quality. This is distributed for 
seed among some of the best farmers, so that the general purity and 
high quality of the Red Fife wheat may be maintained. Red Fife 
is not, as a rule, so successfully grown in the Eastern Provinces, and 
there, other varieties are needed, and the new sorts referred to are 
gradually finding their way into general cultivation in many of the 
eastern districts. Should there at any time be any material diminu- 
tion in the productiveness and vigour of the Red Fife on the prairie 
lands of the west, we have, in these new sorts, other varieties which 
will be available to take its place. 
In the efforts to obtain rust-resisting sorts crosses have been made 
chiefly with varieties of Triticum durum, of which the Goose and 
Roumanian wheats are well known examples. Some work has also 
been done in crossing the Speltz wheat with other spring varieties. 
Long experience has shown that these sorts are less liable to the 
attacks of rust than most other varieties, but the grain is inferior in 
quality for bread-making. In producing these crosses Red Fife has 
generally been used as one of the parents, with the hope of securing 
a higher quality in the progeny. The experience had with these 
later crosses has not yet been sufficient to permit of reliable opinions 
being formed as to their merits. 
One of the most interesting crosses in wheat yet made here was 
produced in 1900 by Dr. C. E. Saunders, to whose careful and skillful 
manipulations I am indebted for many of the most promising sorts 
under trial. In this instance the Red Fife flowers were fertilized 
with pollen of the Polonian wheat, Triticum polonicum. The Polonian 
wheat has a very large and remarkable head, with very large kernels. 
As a rule the plant grown from the kernel resulting from the cross 
produces heads closely resembling those of the female used in the 
experiment, and such modifications as are brought about by introduc- 
Sec. IV, 1902. 6. 
