THE EAR 385 



with the wheat drooped and blackened at the ordeal 

 of the sun, although a quarter of an acre of a branch 

 of their family fifty yards north escaped unscathed. 

 I had arranged to go that day to visit the experi- 

 mental farm run by the Government at Indian 

 Head, and was glad of the drive as a means of dis- 

 traction, and also as an opportunity of examining 

 how far the frost might affect the harvest. 



The horses caught the whiff of Jack Frost in the 

 air. Tossing head and heel they flew across the 

 prairie, jubilant no doubt in the consciousness that 

 the day of their tormenting enemy the mosquito 

 had fled once more, and good pasture would again 

 be an undisturbed delight. On my way I passed a 

 man driving a hayrack. 



" Four degrees only," was the reply to my question ; 

 but the next moment in passing a garden 1 noticed 

 that the vegetable -marrow plants had gone under, 

 and not a solitary potato plant had escaped. 

 Onward we raced across the prairie trail towards 

 Wideawake, where to the left started those wonderful 

 miles of wheat plain. Here, in the wheat season, 

 miles and miles of unfenced grain line the trail on 

 either side, unbroken save for the road allowance 

 and an occasional patch of summer-fallow land, 

 and through the avenue of standing grain one drives 

 to the very border of the main street of the wheat 

 town of Indian Head. Had the frost worked 

 mischief ? I asked myself the question many times 

 during the eighteen-mile drive. The oats denied 

 injury. The dusky tint of many a square-mile 

 patch already invited the binder. I noticed that 

 the wisdom of old-timers had decided to save on 

 oats after the lesson of 1907, and bitterly I regretted 



2B 



