208 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



diate neighborhood and being intimately acquainted, not 

 only with the introducer, but with the circumstances, I can 

 vouch for the correctness of the statement and, if neces- 

 sary, produce incontestible proof." ^^ 



This letter seems to afford conclusive evidence that the 

 wheat from which Red Fife sprang was formerly grown 

 in central or eastern Europe, that it was conveyed by ship 

 from the port of Danzig to the port of Glasgow, and that at 

 the latter place a sample of it was procured from the cargo 

 and sent to David Fife in Ontario. There is therefore 

 no reason whatever to suppose that Red Fife, as its syno- 

 nyms Scotch Fife and Glasgow seem to suggest, was ever 

 grown in Scotland. 



There were some who were inclined to believe that Red 

 Fife originated as a sport from David Fife's imported 

 seed and therefore that it constituted a new variety which 

 first came into existence in Ontario. This hypothesis, 

 which was never very satisfactory, has now been shown by 

 Dr. Saunders to be superfluous, for he has demonstrated 

 by exact comparison that Red Fife is identical with a cen- 

 tral European variety of wheat known as Galician. 



In his evidence, given as Dominion Cerealist before the 

 Committee on Agriculture at Ottawa in 1905, Dr. Charles 

 Saunders, after quoting George Essen's letter, made the 

 following statements : " This account has given rise to 

 the idea that Red Fife is a Canadian wheat, that it origi- 

 nated with Mr. Fife in some wholly unaccountable man- 

 ner, or as a sport from a European variety. It always 

 seemed to me probable that the kernel which Mr. Fife 

 obtained was merely a seed of some common European va- 

 riety which had found its way into 'the wheat from Danzig. 



81 The Canadian Agriculturalist, March, 1861, p. 167. The letters 

 of Clarke and Essen are here cited from an article Canadian Wheat 

 History prepared by C. C. James and published in the Grain Grow- 

 ers' Guide, June 7, 1916, p. 36. 



