234 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



so long studied and made the basis of further selections by 

 Mr. Burbank in so distant a State as California. 



In a circular called Burbank' s 1918 New Standard 

 Grains, issued from his Experimental Farms at Santa 

 Rosa, Burbank, under the head of: A New Productive 

 White Wheat — " Quality," makes the following state- 

 ments : " This season I offer a superior, early, hard 

 white wheat suited to all climates wherever wheat can be 

 grown ; as a Summer wheat in cold far Northern climates 

 and as a Winter crop in the United States and most wheat- 

 growing countries. It is specially adapted also to short 

 seasons, arid soils, and dry climates. A superior milling 

 wheat which makes the best light sweet nutritious bread 

 and pastry. . . . This early hardy Quality wheat which 

 I offer this season will not yield as much as some of the 

 coarse macaroni wheats in some warm, dry sections, but 

 for general culture, with its unusual hardiness and extreme 

 earliness, uniformity, superior milling and baking quali- 

 ties, it stands alone. It most resembles in all these re- 

 spects the hard Northern Prize Marquis but has a vitreous 

 white berry of quite different appearance and quality and 

 of about the same specific gravity as of granite." Quality 

 is offered to the public at $5 per pound or $45 for 10 

 pounds, i. e., at the rate of $270 per bushel, so that it is 

 doubtless the most expensive wheat in the world. Only 

 as its price goes down can farmers hope to purchase a suf- 

 ficient quantity of seed to cultivate it on a large scale and 

 thus make it an article of commerce so far as the miller 

 and baker are concerned. ^^ 



12 In his Burbwnk's 1918 New Standwrd Grams, Mr. Burbank 

 advertises for sale two other varieties of wheat in addition to Qual- 

 ity: Quantiti/ offered in 1918 for the first time and Super first 

 offered in 1917. Quantity is on sale at the same prices as Quality, 

 i. e., $2.75 for 0.5 pound, $5 for 1 pound, $23 for 5 pounds, $45 for 

 10 pounds, $1 for 10 sample heads, and 60 cents for 5 sample heads. 



