212 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



handful of the grain was sown in the succeeding year." If 

 this story were true, and the writer, in view of George 

 Essen's letter is not prepared to accept it as such, we 

 should be obliged to regard Red Fife as having sprung not 

 from a single plant but from many scores of plants, thus 

 having a multiple origin. 



In the first two of the traditions which have been re- 

 lated so far, David Fife is represented as not sending for 

 the wheat but as receiving it as an unexpected present from 

 a friend in Scotland. Another tradition which is told at 

 much greater length and with many details not appearing 

 elsewhere, and which is regarded by Mr. F. H. Dobbin, the 

 present town-clerk of Peterborough, as authentic, has a 

 very different complexion, for it represents Fife as a man 

 who was anxious to raise a better kind of wheat than was 

 locally available and who therefore sent to Scotland on 

 two occasions for foreign seed-wheat for experimental pur- 

 poses. The story ^^ told by Mr. Dobbin is as follows : 



" The locality in which the celebrated Fife Wheat was 

 first propagated, is that which is now known as the Mid- 

 land District of Ontario. This part of the province lies 

 midway between Toronto and Kingston, skirts Lake On- 

 tario, extends back from the Lake for a distance of forty 

 miles, and comprises in part the counties of Durham, 

 Northumberland, Peterborough, and Hastings. 



" The township of Otonabee, in which the Fife family 

 lived, forms the most southern part of the county of Peter- 

 borough, and is bounded on the west by the river Otonabee, 

 on the south by Rice Lake, on the north by the townships 

 immediately adjoining, and on the east by the county of 

 Hastings. At the time of which we are speaking, all this 

 section of the country was comprised in what was known 



88 This story was kindly sent to me in August, 1918, by Mr. Dob- 

 bin, to whom I applied for information. 



