WINNIPEG, 1909. 755 
forcing its way upward from the States. The population numbers a 
million, and its agricultural prosperity is advancing by leaps and bounds. 
The country, he adds, needs no fantastic exaggerations to draw attention 
to its achievements and its possibilities; it only needs a cool estimate of 
these and consolidation rather than excessive expansion. A vast amount 
of energy and capital has been wasted in attempts to exploit regions which 
are, and must long remain, distant from markets, while fertile soils easy 
of access have remained under cultivation of a highly primitive character. 
The immense natural resources of the rich soil of Manitoba and of portions 
of Saskatchewan and Alberta are not even yet being fully exploited. Very 
considerable improvements in agricultural methods must yet take place if 
their resources are to be fully utilised. 
Professor Brigham’s Paper. 
A paper by Professor Albert Percy Brigham dealt with the development 
of wheat culture in North America generally. As may be seen from the text 
of this paper printed in the Reports of the Association (p. 230), its scope 
covered the history of the cultivation of this cereal and the striking changes 
which had occurred in the distribution of the area so occupied within 
the United States, the movement of wheat exports, and the prospects, on 
the one hand, of an increasing consumptive demand, and, on the other, 
of an augmented yield per acre from more scientific modes of farming. 
Professor Brigham quotes a variety of opinions as to the future of wheat 
growing within the United States, and the various factors which have to be 
weighed before the declining importance of the American export trade become 
evident. He accepted the view that the future development of cereal culti- 
vation in his own country depended more on improved methods than on 
adding new lands. If the United States has 150,000,000 inhabitants at no 
distant date, they would need 900,000,000 bushels of wheat for home supply. 
As already 700,000,000 bushels had been reaped in one year, an addition of 
only four bushels per acre on existing areas would fill the gap, while if they 
could add another 10 or 12 million acres they could keep up the present 
scale of export. 
Towards the close of his paper Professor Brigham approached the remark- 
able conditions attending the wheat areas of the North-West of Canada and 
its capacity for future development. 
He pointed out that, in comparison with some of its competitors, Canada 
was old in this industry, raising 20,000,000 bushels in 1827, while Argentina 
only began in 1882. The high level of the present Canadian yield was 
noted owing to the natural fertility of the prairies, the greatest crop ever 
raised from unfertilised land being credited to Canada in 1901, when 
63,425,000 bushels were raised on something more than 2,500,000 acres, or 
more than 25 bushels per acre. Professor Brigham quoted on the authority 
of Mr. Blue, of the Census and Statute Office at Ottawa, the crops recorded 
in each year of the present century (1900-08) separately for each of the 
three provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The exports of 
Canadian wheat ranged from sixteen and nine millions respectively in 1900 
and 1901 to a maximum of 43,654,668 bushels in 1908. With reference to the 
recent northerly attempts at wheat growing, he quoted the experiments in 
the Peace River district at Fort Vermilion, 550 miles north of Edmonton, 
where 35,000 bushels had, according to Dr. Wm. Saunders, been raised in 
1908. 
If there was to be prophecy as to Canada’s future product, her own 
experts must play the part of seer. He had not seen any retraction or 
modification made by Dr. Saunders of his ‘reasonable prophecy’ of 1904 
that wheat grown on one-fourth of the land suited to it in the Canadian 
302 
