Properties of Colorado Wheat 
5 
may kill the wheat plant as quickly as a warm muggy spell, or 
the lack of ventilation in lodged grain may start, an unwelcomed 
development of the rust fungus. The rust fungus is not the only 
hostile form of plant life whose development may depend upon 
the weather, but whose presence we are unable to observe under 
ordinary conditions. On the other hand, the soil may also contain 
beneficial organisms, whose development may be made more easy 
or more difficult by the weather conditions, and the good or bad 
influence of these factors upon the crop must be considered as 
an indirect effect of the climate. 
These plants are not so unlike the wheat plants themselves, 
for they are not wholly independent of either the climate or the 
soil. The rust fungus happens to be an injurious parasite on the 
wheat plant, and its development seemingly depends, in an extreme 
measure, upon the weather and the condition of the wheat plant 
for its development in an injurious degree. On the other hand, 
our soil conditions may be unfavorable; for instance, in the case 
of peas, etc., they may be such that the little wart-like growths 
which are ordinarily present, on the roots of our peas, red clover 
and alfalfa may not appear and these plants will not do so well 
and will not yield satisfactory crops. 
ALL FACTORS MUST BE CONSIDERED 
So, if we separate soil and climate from one another or leave 
out these other factors, we make a mistake which will quite surely 
defeat us in trying to explain the facts with which we meet. 
The climatic factors are not, as a rule, under our control. 
We cannot regulate the temperature nor control the winds, clouds 
and rains. If there is no rainfall, we can apply water, even in 
field culture, which of course is the only culture that we have 
in view. Practically all writers on this subject have attributed 
the greatest importance in determining the properties of the wheat 
to the supply of water. One writer on this subject points out that 
in Hungary they have, in the regions of light rainfall, small- 
grained, hard wheat which grows softer and larger in the grain 
as they go up into the hill and mountain countries, where the 
rainfall is greater, further, that in France, England, Holland, 
Denmark, and the Scandinavian countries, where they have a 
coastal climate with a heavy rainfall, the wheat is soft, with large 
plump grains. English writers in discussing the character of 
their wheats, attribute deficiencies, in this respect, to an excess 
of rainfall, rather than to a deficiency in the mean temperature 
of their country. These writers point out that the supply of plant 
food is usually sufficient. Our own writers almost without excep- 
