12 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



cereals as had been rescued from the grasshoppers the 

 previous year. But the attempt to raise wheat and barley 

 was again defeated " not by a new flight of the pestilence 

 of last year, but, still worse, by the countless swarms pro- 

 duced in the ground itself where their larvse had been 

 deposited. As early as the latter end of June, the fields 

 were overrun by this sickening and destructive plague; 

 nay, they were produced in masses, two, three, and in some 

 places, near water, four inches deep. The water was poi- 

 soned with them. Along the river they were to be found 

 in heaps, like seaweed, and might be shoveled with a spade. 

 It is impossible to describe, adequately, the desolation thus 

 caused. Every vegetable substance was either eaten up 

 or stripped to the bare stalk ; the leaves of the bushes, and 

 the bark of the trees, shared the same fate ; and the grain 

 vanished as fast as it appeared above ground, leaving no 

 hope either of ' seed to the sower or bread to the eater.' 

 Even fires, if kindled out of doors, were immediately ex- 

 tinguished by them, and the decomposition of their bodies 

 when dead, was still more offensive than their presence 

 when alive." ^® 



Thus it came to pass that by the year 1820 there was no 

 more seed-wheat left in the colony. The history of the 

 first variety or varieties of wheat grown in western Can- 

 ada, which, as we have seen, were of British origin, thus 

 came to an untimely close. 



VI. New Seed-Wheat from the United States 



In order to secure a supply of seed-wheat to sow the 

 land in the spring of 1820, the Selkirk settlers found it 

 necessary to dispatch a party of men to Prairie du Ohien, 

 a town on the banks of the Mississippi in the State of 



28 A. Ross, loc. eit., pp. 49, 50. 



