206 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



cereals, has never been accurately recorded. Hard Eed 

 Calcutta, as already pointed out in an earlier Section,' 

 is a commercial expression and includes several different 

 types of wheat. Thus, for instance, there is Hard Red 

 Calcutta with white chaff. Hard Red Calcutta with brown 

 chaff, and Hard Red Calcutta with black chaff, these types 

 breeding true and being quite distinct from one another. 

 All these types originated in India but how and where are 

 not known. One of them, but which one is also not known, 

 was chosen as the female parent in the cross from which 

 Marquis originated. 



XXIII. The Origin of Red Fife 



The story of the introduction of the celebrated wheat 

 generally known as Red Fife or Scotch Fife into North 

 America, is fraught with the elements of romance and has 

 exercised the mythopoeic faculty of those who have handed 

 it down to us. To relate it here harmonizes well with our 

 main theme, for, as we have seen. Red Fife is the male 

 parent of Marquis. 



Red Fife is called Red because its grains, when typi- 

 cally developed, are of a good red color, and Fife after 

 David Fife, an Ontario farmer, who was the first to raise 

 Red Fife on this side of the Atlantic, and who introduced 

 this variety into Canadian agTiculture almost eighty years 

 ago. 



J. W. Clarke, a Wisconsin farmer, had an excellent crop 

 of Red Fife upon his farm in the year 1860. His yield 

 averaged 36 bushels per acre, and so pleased was he with 

 his harvest that he wrote a letter to the Country Gentle- 

 man and Cultivator telling of his experiences and recom- 

 mending the new variety of wheat to agriculturists in gen- 

 eral. Incidentally, he referred to the originator of Red 

 79 Section II. 



