

OUR FARM CROPS, 



THE WHEAT CROP. 



WHEAT is essentially the bread-corn of the northern 

 temperate zone, and claims the first place in our considera- 

 tion of the "Farm Crops" of our own country. This 

 place, indeed, has been assigned to it since the earliest 

 records of our agriculture; for although, in earlier times, 

 peas, beans, barley, oats, and rye entered more largely 

 than at present into the ordinary food of the people, ex- 

 perience gradually but surely showed that no other grain 

 assimilated so well with the human constitution, and so 

 well represented the two great classes of constituents 

 necessary to sustain the wear and tear of human life. 

 Thus, keeping pace with the increasing civilization and 

 knowledge of the people, wheat has won its way to the 

 head of our market lists, where it now stands, acting as a 

 great social barometer, whose variations are watched with 

 eager anxiety by the peer as well as the peasant. 



A few words will suffice to show how wheat fulfils the 

 conditions necessary for human nutrition better than any 

 other of our cultivated grains. The valuable researches in 

 Physiological Chemistry by Liebig, Mulder, and others, so 

 ably followed up by some of our own chemists, have demon- 

 strated clearly that to sustain the functions of animal life 

 two classes of food-constituents are required the one to 

 support the necessary temperature of the body through the 

 agency of the respiratory system the other to furnish mate- 



