6 THE BOOK OF WHEAT. 



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has been raised is in Asia on the Himalaya mountains, 11,000 

 feet above sea level. The four counties of Kansas occupying 

 the center of its famous wheat region have an average eleva- 

 tion of about 1600 feet. The Colorado station has developed a 

 type of wheat adapted to the higher altitudes of the mountain 

 regions, those of 6,000 to 9,000 feet elevation. 



Historical and Geographical. In the western half of Asia, in 

 Europe, and in northern Africa, wheat has since time im- 

 memorial occupied the first rank of cereals. It was one of 

 the main crops of the Israelites in Canaan. None was grown 

 in the New World before the sixteenth century. Humboldt 

 says that a negro slave of Cortez found three or four grains of 

 wheat in the rice which served to maintain the Spanish army. 

 This was apparently sown before 1530, about the date when 

 the Spaniards introduced wheat culture into Mexico. In 1547 

 wheat bread was hardly known in Cuzco, Peru. The first 

 wheat sown in the United States was by Gosnold in 1602 on 

 the Elizabeth Islands off the southern coast of Massachusetts. 

 It was first cultivated in Virginia in 1611, and in New Nether- 

 lands before 1622. By 1648 there were several hundred acres 

 in the Virginia colony. Missionaries first introduced it into 

 California in 1769. Cuba saw its cultivation at least as. early 

 as 1808. It must have been early introduced into Canada, at 

 least by the close of the eighteenth century, for in 1827 Canada 

 raised over twenty million bushels. The first wheat success- 

 fully grown and harvested in the Red river valley was in 1820. 

 Victoria wheat, which had been acclimated by growing 200 

 years in the tropics, was successfully grown in experiments on 

 Jamaica and the Bahama Islands, 1834 to 1836. There was a 

 prejudice against it, however, and Indian corn was grown in 

 preference. Minnesota's first settlements date back to about 

 1845. Wheat raising became a regular branch of farming in 

 Argentina in 1882. Such were the historical beginnings of 

 the wheat industry in the western hemisphere. It has now 

 become a more or less important industry over practically all 

 of America lying outside of frigid zone climates. 



IMPORTANCE. 



Quantitative. Both in the quantity produced and in its value, 

 wheat is the world's king of cereals. Recent statistics show, 



