WINNIPEG, 1909. 769 
during the present season at Brandon also; it is a strong grower and 
promises well. Its advantage in earliness over common Red Fife is only 
a few days under ordinary conditions; by no means sufficient to meet the 
needs of all districts, but quite enough to establish its value and to create 
a large demand for it. It has been named Early Red Fife and will, it 
is expected, be available for general distribution in small quantities after 
the next harvest. 
It would be quite in accord with popular ideas if we were to carry 
on repeated selections of Karly Red Fife for earliness through several 
years or decades, in the hope of obtaining still further advances in that 
direction. Unfortunately there are good grounds for believing that the 
further advances would ‘tease the patience of the centuries’ before any 
striking results would be obtained. Early Red Fife did not, in all pro- 
bability, acquire its earliness by degrees but at one step, at the same time 
as its other points of difference from the parent variety were manifested. 
In introducing this variety I do not claim that I have improved Red Fife 
wheat, but that I have discovered and isolated an improved type which 
had previously been mixed with the ordinary form. It is from cross- 
breeding followed by selection that one may expect the greatest advances in 
the direction of any desired change; and it is to cross-bred varieties therefore 
that we must look for still earlier wheats of high baking strength. 
We may now turn to some of the observations of a scientific character 
which have been made during the progress of this work. 
In regard to the inheritance of awns I wish merely to repeat my view 
that awns and the absence of awns do not necessarily form a pair of 
Mendelian unit characters, but that an intermediate condition is quite 
common (in wheats of cross-bred origin) in the first generation and also 
in succeeding generations. It has been asserted that strength and weakness 
of flour form a pair of Mendelian unit characters. Even after making 
all due allowance for the necessarily somewhat indefinite meaning of the 
words strong and weak, the writer finds it impossible to accept this view. 
(See Journal of Agricultural Science, vol. iii. p. 218.) 
Among other irregularities in inheritance, two may be mentioned which 
occur so frequently as to suggest that they may perhaps be regularities 
after all. When two varieties of wheat having reddish bran are crossed, it 
often occurs that in the second and later generations some of the progeny 
have yellowish bran. In regard to awns a somewhat similar phenomenon 
is often observed, namely, the appearance in the second and later genera- 
tions of fully bearded plants, both the parent varieties having been practi- 
cally awnless. In such cases I have never witnessed the production of 
intermediate or half-bearded types which are so common when bearded and 
beardless sorts are crossed. Perhaps the occasional production of downy 
chaff when two varieties with smooth chaff have been crossed may also 
belong to this same category, though it appears to be less common. 
~ 
5. The Influence of Good Seed in Wheat Production. By C. A. 
Zavirz, Professor of Field Husbandry, Agricultural College, 
Guelph, Ontario. 
That good seed is at the very foundation of good farming is as true 
in the case of wheat as it is in that of any other farm crop; seed is there- 
fore occupying the attention of investigators throughout the world. When 
we realise that about 11 per cent. of all the wheat grown, amounting 
to fully 300 million bushels, is used annually for seed, we can understand 
something of the great importance of the problems. 
A considerable amount of attention has been paid to the study of the 
seed of various classes of farm crops, ‘including wheat, at the Agricultural 
1909. 3D 
