The failure was due, in part, to a lack of knowledge of the best methods of preparing the soil and the right time to sow. The seed did not germinate properly, and consequently the fields were foul with weeds. But the most serious handicap was the lack of varieties properly adapted to the severe conditions of summer drought and of early fall freezes. The wheat of British origin withered in the summer heat and grew too slowly to ripen before the first fall frosts, which come early in that part of Canada.

In the United States wheat sown in the fall is cut from June to August. Farmers are sometimes anxious about midsummer drought but never fear that the crop will be damaged by frost at harvest time. North of the Canadian border wheat must be sown in the spring; and the plants start to head in August and ripen in September. A crop that would make forty or fifty bushels of grain, if only it had a few more days in which to ripen, may be ruined by freezing before it is ready to cut, or snow may flatten it to the ground, leaving it hopelessly beyond the power of any harvesting machinery to gather.

The need for quick-growing, early ripening wheat has been so urgent that Canadian farmers have always been on the lookout for new varieties that would give them good yields as well as the quality of grain that the foreign markets demanded. In time, by that slow process of trial and failure, they gradually collected those wheats that ripened in most of the years and produced a profitable crop. One of the most widely grown of these early varieties was the Red Fife wheat. Its coming to Canada illustrates the way cultivated plants are spread around the world.

David Fife, living on a farm in Ontario about 1842, obtained from a friend in Scotland a small quantity of wheat that had been taken from a ship from Danzig. The wheat had been grown somewhere in North Central Europe. The quality of the grain attracted Fife's friend. The wheat arrived in Canada in the spring and was planted at once, but it proved to be a winter wheat. It all failed to ripen except three heads that had grown from a single grain.

Seeds often get mixed in handling. They lodge in the crevices of threshing machines and are carried from farm to farm. The corners and cracks of farm wagons, warehouse bins, and the holds of ships contain many a kernel that mixes in with a succeeding shipment. In some way one kernel of spring wheat got into the seed sent to Fife and was easily detected when the ripening heads stood out in a field that was otherwise barren. The few seeds harvested were of considerable interest to Fife, although most farmers would have passed them by. Saved and sown the following year, they grew well and were entirely free from rust in a year when all the wheat in the neighborhood was badly diseased.

Although planted rather late and in an unfavorable spot, these few plants ripened a good crop. From this small beginning has come the wheat that has been grown from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains as the Scotch Fife, Red Fife, or Glasgow wheat. A comparison has shown that Fife is identical with a variety grown in Europe and known as Galician. Doubtless it could tell of many interesting events in its long history from the wild.

The early distribution of this wheat was rather slow, but in the early eighties it became the principal variety in Western Canada and established the reputation of the Dominion as a producer of high quality milling and baking wheat. Manitoba No. 1 hard, the trade name for the best of this wheat, brought the highest price at Liverpool. Valuable as this wheat from Europe has been, its greatest value now lies in the early ripening Marquis wheat that has been derived from it.

While Fife was earlier than most of the wheat previously grown and freer from rust, it was still not early enough to escape damage from frost as the farms were extended northward. Summer drought withered its stalks, and in those years when rust was bad, it did not escape injury.

Before 1850 several attempts were made to establish experimental farms, but these all failed until the present Dominion Experimental Farms system was established in 1888. William Saunders was the organizer and first director. Before taking charge, he had been a druggist with a hobby for developing new fruits by crossbreeding. His grapes, gooseberries, currants, and raspberries were hardier and yielded more in the Canadian farm gardens than the varieties from the Old Country or from the United States. But what the farmers on the newly plowed prairies wanted most was an earlier maturing wheat. The soil was wonderfully fertile, and the wide, level fields were admirably suited for wheat growing on a large scale, if only the menace of the frost and snow could be averted.

Saunders collected wheats from many different countries and tested them alongside the standard Fife on the newly established experimental farms. Wheat from the high plateaus of India ripened much earlier, but the plants were small and the yield too light to be of much value. One wheat, in particular, from the Lake Ladoga region north of Petrograd, was especially promising for its earliness; but when a sufficient increase was obtained to make a milling and baking test, it was found to be seriously deficient in color and texture. Thus the expectation of replacing Fife with earlier ripening wheats from other countries came to nought.

But Saunders was not discouraged. He knew how to combine size from one fruit with hardiness from another by crossbreeding and selection. If it worked with gooseberries, why wouldn't it work with wheat? The first crosses were made at the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa in 1888, using the imported plants from India and Russia with the locally grown Fife. Busy with administrative details, he employed his two sons, Charles and Arthur, to help him, along with J. L. McMurray and W. T. Macoun. Cross-pollinations were made at Brandon and Indian Head in Saskatchewan and at Agassiz in British Columbia. The crossed seeds or their progeny were later assembled at Ottawa, where the task of selecting and comparing the new plants was begun.