698 TRANSACTIONS OF SUB-SECTION K. 
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 direction, to suit the crop to its environ- 
ment, Nothing could be a greater boon to the wheat farmers, handicapped 
by a short and irregular supply of summer warmth, and the occasional but 
often untimely invasion of the frost fiend, than the production of varieties 
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 Professor 
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 exploited 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 your 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 maxim of not carrying all your eggs in one 
basket has a very profound truth to rest upon. The farming of the future 
must ultimately be one of more careful tillage, more scientific rotations, 
and of consideration for the changes in the grouping of population and 
in the world-wide conditions of man and his varying wants. What is 
going on all over the world has to be learned and studied well, and wheat 
pioneers of the North-West must not forget the possibility of yet new 
competitors arising in the single task of wheat-growing, whether they are 
to be looked for in the still developing sections of the Russian Empire 
and the still open levels of Argentina, the little known regions of Man- 
churia, the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, the more completely irri- 
gated plains of India, the tablelands of Central Africa, or perhaps under 
new conditions and a more developed control of the reserves of water supply 
on the southern shores of the Mediterranean or even in the long tilled valley 
of the Nile. 
The following Papers were then read :— 
1. Methods of Crop-reporting in Different Countries. 
By E. W. Goprrey. 
2. Moisture Studies of Semi-Arid Soils. By F. J. Auway, B.A., Ph.D. 
As the result of field and laboratory studies of soils from widely separated 
points in the semi-arid region of summer rains in North America, the 
author concludes that generalisations previously shown to apply to studies 
of soil moisture in Saskatchewan* apply also to the whole of the semi- 
arid region of summer rainfall from the Saskatchewan River on the 
north to the Mexican boundary on the south. The generalisations are :— 
1. The determination of the ‘ hygroscopic coefficient ’ of the soils is, in 
many cases, indispensable for the intelligent interpretation of the moisture 
data, and is in all cases important. 
2..The depth to which samples should be taken should extend at least as 
1 J. Agric. Science, vol. ii, p. 333. 
