Main Importations


the Department. Leading producers were the red and white
Mediterranean, the Tappahannock (of American origin), and the
Russian Schefel. Of sixty-seven varieties of spring wheat sown in
1866, forty-six did well while the Red Chili and Black Sea varieties
scored special commendation.
 Many varieties of wheat from the Royal Agricultural Exhibition
at Vienna were procured for trial by the Department in 1866.
They were part of a shipment of cereal and vegetable seeds. Eight
of these were sown in the autumn of 1866, and others were sown
the next spring. A number of suitable varieties were found from
tests conducted on forty-three varieties of winter wheat and sixty-
six of spring wheat grown experimentally in 1867. Capron gave
samples of these importations to the governor of Minnesota in an
effort to find one suitable for that state.
 Generally favorable reports were received after 1870 from two
distributions of Touzelle, a beardless white winter wheat pro-
cured by the department from Marseilles, France, in 1869. Another
variety called Soisette was also imported from France in 1870 and
grown with good results.

 AMERICAN WHEATS
 The most successful wheats during the next two decades proved
to be of American origin. Individuals were selecting and breeding
new varieties to meet the demand for better crops. This search for
suitable varieties was stimulated by an increase in agricultural
education and the need for regional varieties. The government,
however, did not depend entirely upon native stocks for experi-
mentation, and continued to make importations from abroad.
 The search for new wheat varieties was not the only factor that
helped increase wheat production after 1865. There was an
emigration to the West due to the Homestead Act and the end of
the Civil War. The markets for wheat increased. Methods of culti-
vation were improved and refinements added to the reaper.
 Most of the wheat varieties developed in America were pro-
duced by pure-line selection. The Fultz, a beardless, soft red winter
wheat, is an important example of this method. It was selected in
1862 by Abraham Fultz from a field of Mediterranean and was
later grown extensively in the central section of the eastern wheat
belt. During this same period, crop breeders were searching
Canada for new wheat varieties. A shipment of 100 bushels of