154 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



It is difficult to overestimate the value of this new wheat to the 

 farmers of the prairie provinces. Without attempting to give any exact 

 calculation, one needs only to mention that in the year 1912 there were 

 grown in these three provinces about 183,000,000 bushels of wheat, 

 a large proportion of which was Red Fife. If Marquis had been sown 

 instead, the yield would have been on the average at least one-fifth 

 more, and the wheat would have been as a rule of a higher grade. One- 

 fifth more crop and a few cents better price per bushel would have 

 meant a very large sum of money. In 1911 the advantage of Marquis 

 would have been even greater than in 1912. I am happy to state that 

 Marquis is now being so widely grown that the disasters of 1911 will 

 not be repeated unless a still more unfavourable season should at some 

 time occur. 



No review of the history of Marquis wheat would be complete 

 without mentioning its successes in seed fairs and exhibitions. Not 

 only has Marquis carried off nearly all the best prizes in the seed fairs 

 in the three provinces during the last two years; but it has twice won 

 the highest award in international competitions open to the whole 

 continent of America. At the New York Land Show in the autumn 

 of 1911, Mr. Seager Wheeler of Rosthern, Sask., gained the first prize 

 in wheat with an exhibit of Marquis; and at the International Dry- 

 Farming Congress at Lethbridge last autumn the same variety, grown 

 by Mr. Henry Holmes of Raymond, Alberta, gained the highest 

 award. 



While the reselection of all the material available was being carried 

 on so as to discover and isolate the best strains which had arisen from 

 the crosses made in the earlier years of the history of the Experimental 

 Farms, very many new crosses were effected in 1903 and the following 

 years, to take advantage of the new possibilities by using the cross- 

 bred varieties as parents, as well as to follow out other lines of breeding 

 which had not been sufficiently tested before. These more recent 

 crosses soon gave rise to an immense amount of interestin'i; and valuable 

 material, the study of which is still going on and seems likely to occupy 

 much time for some years to come. Only one variety of wheat (and 

 none at all of any other kind of grain) has yet been introduced from 

 among the numerous descendants ■ of the writer's crosses of 1903; 

 though it is expected that several other new varieties will be found 

 among these of sufficient merit to warrant their introduction, before 

 the possibilities of rigid and repeated selection applied to this immense 

 amount of material have become exhausted. The new wheat referred 

 to has been named Prelude on account of its extraordinary earliness 

 in ripening, for it precedes all other varieties of wheat yet introduced 

 into Canada. 



