230 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



an immense influence upon human history, remain un- 

 known to the general public; and among them is that of 

 Dr. Charles E. Saunders whose Marquis wheat is the 

 theme of this essay. Of farmers and others who handle 

 grain in western Canada the writer has often asked the 

 question : who discovered and introduced Marquis wheat ? 

 and not so many as one in ten have been able to give a 

 correct answer. The name of Charles E. Saunders has 

 received no advertisement: neither book nor magazine ar- 

 ticle has ever been written about his labors and his achieve- 

 ments; but it may safely be said that the economic im- 

 portance of Marquis which he discovered and gave to the 

 world, by far outweighs at the present moment that of all 

 Burbank's novelties put together. The writer does not 

 wish in any way to minimize the great interest and value 

 of Burbank's work in stating that Bui'bank's efforts at im- 

 provements have not been chiefly concerned with the lead- 

 ing food-plant. One's delight in beautiful flowers is en- 

 tirely aesthetic, and one does not live on spineless cacti, 

 upon plums, cherries, raspberries, or walnuts, and com- 

 paratively few eat the Burbank potato ; but bread is truly 

 the staff of life for the most progressive part of the popu- 

 lation of the globe. The eating of wheaten bread, like the 

 using of soap, is a mark of civilization; and a great im- 

 provement in the king of cereals is therefore of the utmost 

 importance to everybody. 



This year, 1918, upon the prairies of western Canada 

 and in the Great Plains region of the United States of 

 America, there have been produced more than 300,000,000 

 bushels of Marquis, a mass of wheat sufficient to provide 

 for a whole year the normal bread and other wheat re- 

 quirements of a population of 50,000,000 people. The 

 average selling price for the 1918 wheat crop has been 



