Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 65 — page 33: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Red Fife wheat, already culti- vated in South Canada. Years after years, he raced the offspring of these varieties against the clock. In 1903, Dr. Charles Saun- ders, his son, came out with a single ear of their new Marquis strain, which beat Ol’ Jack Frost to the draw by six days. And the new strain was to prove by one fifth more productive than its next most prolific runner-up. Now- adays, that one ear developed fifty-two years ago yields a descendance of well over 300 million bushels per year! The tomato, a sub-tropical plant, has been traditionally associated with sunny Italy. “Nonsense,” thought to him- self Dr. F. J. Yeager, of the Agricultural College of New Hampshire. “‘People in nor- thern lands need even more a ready source of Vitamin C supply. It'd be simpler to enable them to grow tomatoes than citrus-fruit.”’ So he raced the cheerful red-cheeked affair against the clock. Now you can grow his Farthest North tomato in Alaska. But that northern strain has the drawback that you 32 must look at it through a magnifying glass to see it at all. Charles Walkof, Senior Horticulturist at the Marsden Experimental Station, Canada, decided to take up where Yeager had left off. He meant to blow up that marble of a Farthest North into tennis. ball size and more, while retaining its earliness. He has now come up with Erli-North, which yields fruit weighing up to 16 ounces each, and is almost as early as its parent variety. Farmers are already cashing in on it in Middle Canada. Now, Walkof is bent on driving his tennis ball tomato as far north as Greenland. Perhaps he will succeed, perhaps not. It might be impossible to build up earliness so far north into a large-sized tomato, for it must — be given proper time to grow and ripen. All the same, Walkof and his associates keep trying. | Hybridizers are never hap- pier than when you put them to develop for you a new strain, neatly tailored to meet your own specifications, and presenting the choicest and toughest breeding nuts to comiclooks.conn