1 80 SCIENCE PROGRESS ' 



during the last twenty years and their crops to-day are superior 

 to others in the district. This is not to be regarded as instancing 

 an improvement in the quality of flax seed for fibre production 

 but as showing how deterioration may be prevented. That 

 deterioration has taken place is beyond question and is admitted 

 by Russian farmers themselves. Generally speaking, i acre of land 

 at the present time yields 2 cwt. of finished flax fibre ; twenty- 

 five years ago the yield was 3! cwt — a loss of more than £2 per 

 acre to the peasant producer. Most countries, if not all, depend 

 upon Russia either directly or indirectly for their supply of flax 

 seed, so it is not surprising to hear universal complaints about 

 the decreasing yield of fibre from the flax crops. 



In the west central provinces, the number of horses and 

 cattle kept by the peasantry is very small. When a household 

 does possess a cow, it becomes the duty of some old person or 

 of a child to accompany the animal throughout the day as it 

 goes browsing over waste places, so as to prevent it doing 

 damage by wandering on to the unprotected fields. For similar 

 reasons, little children are sent out with the geese to wander with 

 them wherever they go and to bring them home again at dusk. 



The governments of Pskov and the neighbouring govern- 

 ments of Livonia, Vitebsk, Smolensk and Tver constitute the 

 most important flax-growing area in the world. It is no 

 exaggeration to say that nearly the whole of the linen trade 

 depends upon this great flax district. It is not surprising 

 therefore to find that the keen cosmopolitan competition for 

 flax fibre is waking up the slothful peasant and that the Ministry 

 of Agriculture is endeavouring to improve present methods of 

 preparing flax. 



The general practice with this crop is to pull the plants 

 before the seed has ripened and to tie them up into bundles, so that 

 all the roots are at one end. The next operation is to remove 

 the seed. Sometimes this is done in the field and the green 

 stems are at once retted in water; or the pulled flax maybe 

 dried and then deprived of its seed. By whichever method the 

 seed is obtained from the straw, it is finally dried artificially at 

 a fairly high temperature and then spread on a stone floor to be 

 threshed. Threshing often consists in a horse dragging a 

 wooden roller about over the seed so as to crush the " bolls," 

 the seed being separated from the chaff by repeatedly 

 screening in a draughty situation. 



