48 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



once from the threshing machine to the country elevator or 

 to a loading platform on a railway siding. 



In the West, the standing crops are sometimes destroyed 

 locally in summertime by violent hailstorms which in ex- 

 treme instances have been known to rain down hailstones 

 the size of hens' eggs.^^ Usually the area ruined by a 

 hailstorm is several miles in length but seldom more than 

 a mile in width. To compensate for the destruction 

 wrought by the ice-balls, a system of cooperative hail insur- 

 ance has been introduced in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and 

 many private hail insurance companies also carry on busi- 

 ness in all parts of the West. 



The western plains, in general, are very level and free 

 from large trees, and hence are easy to break with the 

 plow. The soil is thick and rich in humus and gives a 

 good crop from the first. The chief difficulties of wheat 

 raising arise from temporary droughts in summer, drying 

 winds, early fall frosts, occasional severe attacks of the 

 Black Stem Rust disease, and the already mentioned local 

 hailstorms. Eain, however, seldom falls in too large a 

 quantity and the weather during the harvesting and thresh- 

 ing season is usually dry and bright. There is no more 

 exhilarating sight in the West than the prospect of the 

 binders at work on the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, with 

 the golden grain gleaming under the August sun and above 

 and about all the cloudless blue dome of heaven. And 

 when the last sheaf has been cut and the binders are silent, 



14 This is no exaggeration. Photographs showing hailstones and 

 fowls' eggs of equal size were exhibited by Professor J. W. Shipley to 

 the Physics section at the Winnipeg meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion held in 1909. Vide J. W. Shipley, On the Size of Hailstones 

 observed during a storm in Western Canada, Reports of the British 

 Association, 1909, p. 400. Some of the hailstones " were larger than 

 hens' eggs. At the center of one hailstone a small black fly was 

 found." 



