4i8 



NATURE 



[SEPTEiVlBER 30, 1909 



opportunity of this meeting affords an occasion to submit 

 the conclusions, optimistic or pessimistic, practical or 

 theoretical, economic or scientific, to the test of friendly 

 and thorough discussion. 



It is a relief to turn from the perplexing variety of 

 these speculations as to the future to the relatively more 

 solid ground afforded by the actual records of wheat 

 extension here. If the progress of the past, and here 

 once again more especially of the very latest decade, is 

 to govern the prospect of the years to come, the wheat 

 area of Canada must still possess a great expansive power. 



There are defects of continuous statistics showing from 

 year to year the total acreage of the Dominion, although 

 the recent good work of the Census and Statistics Office 

 promises that this will henceforth be remedied. But out- 

 side of the three great wheat-growing sections — Ontario, 

 Manitoba, and the North-West — the surface under this 

 cereal is not material. By the latest figures available the 

 four Eastern Provinces do not now grow 170,000 acres 

 collectivelv, while the small surface in British Columbia, 



not appearing in the last general Bulletin, was only 15,000 

 acres at the last census. In the roughly sketched diagram 

 I insert here, therefore, the course of wheat-growing on 

 97 per cent, of the 6,611,000 acres accounted for in 1908 

 may be conveniently, if only approximately, traced. 



The decline in Ontario, where, as in other older settle- 

 ments, wheat-growing shrinks as more diversified forms 

 of agriculture evolve, is much more than compensated for 

 when the acreage of Manitoba, and in later years the 

 rest of the North-West, is superadded, as in the columns 

 of this diagram, and the rapidity of the recent extension, 

 which — had the 1909 figures reached my hands sooner 

 would have carried the total area far beyond the seven 

 million limit — testifies to the energy in the task of bread- 

 raising which this hopeful section of the British Empire 

 displays.' 



1 Were the preliminary estimates for igog taken into account, the total 

 .^rreage would have been given as 7. 750.000 acres— a rise of 1,139.000 acres 

 ui the latest twelve months. This is indeed the net result, for the West has 

 added t, 402, 000 acres — of which 1,280,000 were in Saskatchewan and 113,000 

 in .Alberta — while there are declines in the East and in Ontario of an almost 

 exact equivalent of the last-quoted figure, or 114,000 acres, and likewise a 

 reduction of as much as 140,000 acres in Manitoba since 190S. 



KG. 20S3, VOL. Si] 



But whatever determinations we can reach on the hypo- 

 thetical questions here propounded, whether we may regard 

 the greater rate of wheat-field extension in the world at 

 large, which has marked the last decade, as disposing 

 of immediate alarm for the bread supply of the next 

 generation, or whether we find in the recent whisper of 

 augmenting prices corroboration of the gain of population 

 on subsistence, it is clear that our statistical records require 

 a further development and a much improved continuity, 

 especially in the new regions of the wheat supply of the 

 future. Nor yet, again, can we dispense with the urgent 

 lesson that science has much to teach us in making more 

 use than we do of the areas acknowledged to be under 

 more or less rudimentary cultivation. If Sir William 

 Crookes was right in adopting the American statistician's 

 average of 12-7 bushels per acre as the mean of the recog. 

 nisable wheat-fields of the world, the prospect of the 

 extra seven bushels he sought as immediately desirable will 

 make us eager to learn the very latest triumphs of the 

 laboratory in winning for the soil a freer measure of the 

 nitrogen of the air. Even here in 

 Manitoba, where a much higher 

 yield seems on the average to be ! 

 maintained under existing condi- 

 tions, and where the cultivators 

 with their iS bushels average start 

 from a vastly higher level, the 

 promise of such a scientific ally 

 should gladden the heart of the 

 hard-working pioneer. 



One caution, however, I feel it 

 my duty to give, as a practical 

 rather than a scientific agriculturist. 

 Whatever wonders are offered in the 

 way of manurial adjuncts or mech- 

 anical contrivances, do not let our 

 advisers overlook the paramount 

 consideration of the cost which the 

 newer systems may involve. For 

 the extensive farming of a young 

 country it is above all requisite to 

 remember that expensive methods of 

 cultivation are not as feasible as in 

 the intensive husbandry of old 

 settled regions. Hopefully as we 

 may wait on the chemist's help, I 

 confess that, for my own part, I 

 incline still more confidently to the 

 botanist, under whose Kgis of pro- 

 tection agriculture has this year 

 been placed by the decision of the 

 authorities. The producer of new 

 and prolific and yet disease-resisting 

 and frost-defying breeds of wheat 

 plants is to-day more than ever 

 encouraged by what has been done 

 in many lands of late in this direc- 

 tion, to suit the crop to its environ- 

 ment. Nothing could be a greater 

 boon to the wheat farmers, handi- 

 capped by a short and irregular supply of summer 

 warmth, and the occasional but often untimely in- 

 vasion of the frost fiend, than the production of varie- 

 ties of wheat at once prolific and early ripening, and 

 suited to the relatively scanty moisture of semi-arid 

 regions. What success Canadian investigators, with their 

 renowned experimental system, have had in this direction 

 we hope to hear at Winnipeg, while some of us who have 

 listened to Prof. Biffen, of the Agricultural Department of 

 Cambridge University, look for hopeful results from the 

 application of Mendelian laws to the breeding of wheat. 



In closing, let me add that though it is a quarter of a 

 century since I last was here, the message I gave local 

 agriculturists then is one I am tempted to repeat now. 

 It is no use to treat the vast territories you have at your 

 disposal as if they were a mere wheat mine to be ex- 

 ploited in all haste and without regard to its permanence 

 and its future profitable development. It is unwise to 

 proceed as if bread were the only item of food requiring 

 attention at j'our hands, and to regard a spasmodic rush 

 of grain for a limited number of years from a poorly tilled 

 surface as the only way to profitable returns. The stale 



