t of Marquis Wheat on the male side was the mid-Europe Red Fife--a
first-class cereal. The parent on the female side was less promising, a
rather nondescript, not pure-bred wheat, called Red Calcutta, which was
imported from India into Canada about thirty years ago. The father was
part of a cargo that came from the Baltic to Glasgow, and was happily
included in a sample sent on to David Fife in Ontario about 1842. From
one kernel of this sample David Fife started his stock of Red Fife,
which was crossed by Dr. Saunders with Hard Red Calcutta. The result of
the cross was a medley of types, nearly a hundred varieties altogether,
and it was in scrutinising these that Dr. Saunders hit upon Marquis. He
worked steadily through the material, studying head after head of what
resulted from sowing, and selecting out those that gave most promise.
Each of the heads selected was propagated; most of the results were
rejected; the elect were sifted again and yet again, and finally Marquis
Wheat emerged, rich in constructive possibilities, probably the most
valuable food-plant in the world. It is like a romance to read that "the
first crop of the wheat that was destined within a dozen years to
overtax the mightiest elevators in the land was stored away in the
winter of 1904-5 in a paper packet no larger than an envelope."

Thus from the Wild Wheat of Mount Hermon there evolved one of the most
important food-plants of the world. This surely is _Evolution going on_.

Sec. 2

Changes in the Animal Life of a Country

Nothing gives us a more convincing impression of evolution in being than
a succession of pictures of the animal life of a country in different
ages. Dr. James Ritchie, a naturalist of distinction, has written a
masterly book, _The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland_ (1920),
in which we get this succession of pictures. "Within itself," he says,
"a fauna is in a constant state of uneasy restlessness, an assemblage of
creatures which in its parts ebbs and flows as one local influence or
another plays upon it." There are temporary and local changes, endless
disturbances and readjustments of the "balance of nature." One year
there is a plague of field-voles, perhaps next year "grouse disease" is
rife; in one place there is huge increase of starlings, in another place
of rabbits; here cockchafers are in the ascendant, and there the moles
are spoiling the pasture. "But while the parts fluctuate, the fauna as a
whole fol