384 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
Professor Wittmack: I have very much enjoyed Mr. Biffen’s paper. 
I should like to ask if you are in correspondence with Mr. Humphfeys. 
Mr. Elwes: Yes. 
Professor Wittmack: Then the matter is in your hands, and you will 
succeed. But in a climate like that of England there cannot be grown 
strong wheats. Mr. Humphreys got his ‘ Fife’ wheat from Manitoba, 
as his whites never did well in England, Germany, or France. This 
variety of ‘Red Fife’ has proved good in England and very strong also, 
and it did not lose its strength. Is all our theory wrong? Wheat cannot 
become very rich in gluten when the season is long, because the leaves 
have a long growing period during which they assimilate and form more 
starch ; and sothe English grains are very rich in starch, because they 
have long vegetation. If there is a short-vegetation period there cannot 
be so much assimilation of starch, and the production of gluten will be 
greater. How does it come that this variety gives a strong wheat ? 
M. de Vilmorin: This ‘Red Fife’ is a quick-growing variety. It is 
not a Canadian but a German variety. The story of this wheat is 
worth being known. Fifty years ago Mr. Fife, a farmer in Ontario, asked 
one of his friends to send him some wheat from Dantzic. He received 
his wheat and sowed it in the spring ; but it proved to be a winter wheat, 
so that none came to maturity except a few plants here and there, which 
were supposed to be a variation. This was grown by him and was dis- 
tributed to all the farmers round, and is now the most important wheat 
grown in Canada and the Northern States. But this wheat was known 
all the time in Galicia. It never originated in America. It was 
imported from Germany, and it is curious to see that after being 
cultivated for fifty years—one strain in Manitoba and one in Central 
Europe—they are still now identical. 
The President: This is among the most important questions to the 
human race. Professor Lankester has asked the Government for 
£10,000,000 to discover the origin of disease. I think we might ask 
for something to carry on our investigations into the laws of its trans- 
mission. I can only think with admiration of Mr. Biffen’s paper, and 
the experiments he has made with regard to the transmission of rust. 
