184 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



was introduced a few years ago and is being successfully 

 grown in various districts where the season is short, he has 

 called Prelude ^^ because it ripens at the very beginning 

 of the wheat harvest, some two weeks sooner than Marquis. 

 With the coming into existence of such wheats as Marquis 

 and Prelude, it has been made possible to extend the profit- 

 able wheat-growing area of Canada much farther toward 

 the North where the seasons are shorter. It may be added 

 that the name Prelude naturally suggested itself to Dr. 

 Saunders as appropriate owing to his love of music. Pre- 

 lude is a musical term for a preliminary air.^*^ 



The breeding of Prelude has by no means ended the 

 attempts of Dr. Saunders to develop varieties of wheat 

 suited to the short seasons of the ISTorth. His most recent 

 introduction he has called Ruby Wheat on account of the 

 reddish hue of its ripe kernels. As compared with Pre- 



49 C. E. Saunders, Prelude Wheat, Experimental Farms Reports for 

 1911-12, Ottawa, 1913, pp. 117-118. 



50 The particular districts for which Prelude is recommended are 

 Northern Saskatchewan and Northern and Central Alberta; and it 

 is in these that this variety of wheat ripens two weeks earlier than 

 Marquis. There is less diflFerence in the time of ripening in districts 

 where the summer is warmer. Prelude is now grown, sometimes on 

 a considerable scale, at rather high altitudes in Alberta and at 

 northern latitudes in Saskatchewan. It has been ripened in Dawson 

 City in the Yukon. At present it is impossible to say with certainty 

 how much farther North one variety can be grown than another, 

 owing to the incompleteness of the tests which have been made 

 hitherto. In attempting to make comparisons, the variation in the 

 seasons becomes a complicating factor. Even late-maturing wheats 

 can be grown in favorable spots and in favorable seasons in high 

 latitudes, although such successes do not by any means represent 

 the average for a number of consecutive seasons. Thus Red Fife 

 sometimes ripens on the farm where tests are made for the Domin- 

 ion Government at Fort Vermilion on the Peace River, 650 miles north 

 of the International Boundary-line; but this is quite exceptional, 

 and Red Fife is not at all suitable for the Peace River country as a 

 whole, year in and year out. Marquis and other early-maturing 

 wheats do much better in this far distant region of the North. 



