618 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



cleaned and prepared for market by the farmer, who relies upon 



his " Riga-Child " seed making a good price — there being a 



large demand for this variety of seed by French, Irish and 



Belgian growers. Most of the French and Belgian seed is sold 



for oil. 



Separation of the Fibre 



Before the harvested straw can be of use to the spinner in 

 the customary way, it has to be put through several somewhat 

 complicated processes, including retting, breaking, scutching and 

 heckling. All these operations were carried out formerly by the 

 farmer who grew the straw ; but of late the tendency has been for 

 these subsequent operations to get into the hands of people who 

 specialise in one particular phase of fibre preparation. 



It is now the more common practice for the farmer to sell 

 his standing crop, the purchaser deciding when to harvest and 

 himself taking off the seed. He then sells the straw to some- 

 body who rets it and then it passes into the hands of others 

 who have specialised in scutching and heckling; finally it is 

 bought by a dealer who sorts and grades his purchases and 

 sells in large quantities to the spinners. This procedure is 

 quite general in those districts where the higher qualities of 

 flax are produced and must be regarded as a consequence of 

 these subsequent processes requiring greater skill in carrying 

 them out than the average farmer is able to command. 



The first of these after-processes, namely, retting, involves 

 the partial disintegration of the flax straw and for convenience 

 of reference the structure of a flax straw may be briefly de- 

 scribed here. When viewed in transverse section, it may be 

 considered as being composed of two parts or concentric rings : 

 a complex cellular system forming the outer ring and a cell 

 structure of greater simplicity forming the inner ring or woody 

 part of the stem. The valuable part of the straw, namely, the 

 fibre, forms a series of irregular bundles almost on the outside 

 of the stem, their exact position being between two thin par- 

 enchymatous layers, one of which is just beneath the epidermis 

 and the bounding cutica, the other being adjacent to the cam- 

 bium. This briefly describes the formation of the outer layer 

 the complex cellular system of which has to be partly broken 

 down before the bundles of fibre can be obtained in a useful 

 form. The inner part of the stem is made up of a ring of 

 woody material of more or less uniform character and with this 



