The principal wheat area extends from the southeast corner of the province northwesterly along the valley of the Saskatchewan River to the Alberta boundary. This belt is five hundred miles long and in some places two hundred miles wide. Many of its farms contain thousands of acres, and the average holding is three hundred and twenty acres, with one hundred and fifty acres in wheat. When the land was first settled, wheat was the only crop raised, but mixed farming is becoming more important each year and there are now large crops of oats, hay, and alfalfa. The dry climate and hot summer days of the prairies are just right for producing a hard grain, with the high gluten content that makes a big loaf of bread. In that quality Canadian wheat ranks highest in the world. It is mixed with even the finest of the United States product to produce the best flour. The chief varieties grown are red fife and marquis. Red fife was discovered by a Canadian farmer and is the older. Marquis was originated by a scientist of the Dominion Agricultural Department by crossing red fife with an early ripening Indian wheat known as hard red Calcutta. It was distributed among the farmers for general use in 1909, and quickly became the most valuable wheat produced in America. During various trips to Canada I have seen the wheat belt in all its aspects. As soon as the snow has melted and the frost is out of the ground the ploughs are started. The ploughing may be done by the farmers, each on his own land, or by contractors who make a business of preparing fields for planting, and who, later on, do much of the threshing. The ordinary farmer uses a gang plough and from four to a half dozen horses. With four horses he is able to plough more than two acres a day. Much of the work is done by tractors, which pull gang ploughs that turn over a strip of sod as wide as the average city sidewalk. The next process is back-setting. This means going over the field again and throwing the furrows in the opposite direction. Where the land is new, some of the farmers plough it in the spring and back-set it in the summer, seeding it during the following spring. Others, who are anxious to get quick returns, sow wheat the same year that they break up the soil. Sometimes flax is planted as the first crop and wheat the next year. The old picture of the farmer going over the ploughed ground sowing the grain broadcast is something one never sees in Canada. The wheat here is planted with drills, usually pulled by four horses, although on the larger farms several drills, drawn by tractors, sometimes follow one another over the fields.