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be used for a second rotting, it is let off by sluices at low water ; and, if necessary, 

 pumped oft" by a wind-mill into the river, and fresh water let in by the sluices, if 

 wanted, before the ditches fill by draining again. 



In Holland flax is invariably rotted in the same season it is pulled, and 

 scutched off during the winter. The population of those islands, so often referred 

 to, is totally inadequate to perform these operations ; but at the usual season there 

 is an influx of men and women from agricultural districts, accustomed or ti-ained 

 to labor on flax, who year after year look to this employment in winter to help 

 them through, without any detriment to their own little farms at home. 



In Belgium, in the districts which supply the principal markets of Lokeren, St. 

 Nicholas and Malines, and partially Bruges, with flax, the culture is mostly on a 

 small scale, more like gardening than farming; and, consequently, by the atten- 

 tion of a family, who might else be idle, being devoted to a small field of flax 

 a quarter or half an acre, fine quality is produced, and high pi'ices are obtained ; 

 the rotting is something like that in Holland. In the provinces of Liege and 

 Haynault there is a large quantity of flax produced, passing by the name of 

 Walloon flax ; but in that mineral region there being no suitable water, the 

 farmers labor under the disadvantao-e of havino- to dew rot it. Still I have seen 

 some very good flax of that description; and as it continues to be raiseJ, it is 

 to be presumed it pays. Dew-rotting does not bring flax up to its full natural 

 value. For certain purposes, such as thi-eads which have to be dyed, and 

 unbleached common linen cloth, it is well enough ; but it does not take a pure 

 white color in bleaching, as wanted for shirtings, &c., like water-rotted. 



There is a district of country, embracing a portion of French and Belgian ter- 

 ritory, watered by the river Lisse, which produces the best flax in the woi'ld; and 

 there has been, and still is, a sort of magic influence ascribed to the water of this 

 slow, sluggish river, in which the flax is rotted, as the means of making it so 

 much superior to any other. Experiments, almost without number, have been 

 made with it at great expense, such as taking flax grown in other districts, even 

 in other countries, to be rotted in this water, and also taking the water itself 

 to other districts. I am not yet prepared to say positively, whether or not we 

 have in Wisconsin such water as runs in this river Lisse, having unfortunately 

 mislaid the analysis of its properties; but I rather think we have it in plenty. 

 There is a peculiarity in the mode of treating flax in that district, being 

 kept in stack for three years after pulling, and then rotted, which, it is believed, 

 brings out the quality better. I have come pretty near this Courtrai flax in my 

 experiments on samples the first year; and to test the matter thoroughly, I 

 reserved a small portion of my crop of 1849, in the straw just as it was pulJod. 

 After rotting it this ensuing summer, I hope to have formeil an niiinlciii whether 

 or not I am up to the maj'k, and to have samples to show at the next annual 

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