PROCESS OF GROWING AND PREPARING FLAX. JQJ 



or, according to the eflfects of manure and culture. The land is 

 mostly level ; even the most severe drouth will not dry out the soil 

 to a greater depth than three to four inches from the surface. A 

 careful cultivation has given the soil a very deep upper stratum of 

 fertile ground. 



However different the soil may be, yet excellent flax is grown 

 everywhere, with the exception of the quite barren sand soil, the 

 cold clay soil, and the ferruginous soil. But the best and finest 

 flax is found on the solid, rich loam or clay soil, in the vicinity of 

 Doornik ; flax of a middle quality in the neighborhood of Courtrai ; 

 but on the sand soil in section around Bruegge, etc., an inferior, 

 coarser and harder article is grown. 



2. Preceding Crop. — In West Flanders, potatoes, oats, hemp or 

 succory, generally, are the crops chosen to precede flax ; less fre- 

 quently rye, wheat and clover, the latter only on cold soil, but 

 never on warm soil, because it is contended that flax following 

 after clover would burn out in a dry season. Hemp and succory 

 are believed to be the most suitable crops to precede flax ; the 

 latter especially the early flax. In general, the rule prevails that 

 oily plants, with the exception of hemp, are not suitable crops to 

 precede flax, while mealy products, except beans and peas, are 

 deemed suitable for that purpose. Flax is grown but once on the 

 same field in seven or nine years ; even in a good, unexhausted 

 soil a good flax crop is not expected again on the same field sooner 

 than seven years after the preceding flax crop. 



3. Cultivation and Manuring. — The cultivation of the field va- 

 ries according to the nature of the soil and the preceding crop. 

 Where flax is to follow upon potatoes, the field is plowed in the 

 fall into small beds, and plowed or spaded deep in the spring. 

 Oats, rye and wheat fields are plowed shallow once or twice in the 

 fall (a wet soil is plowed deeper), laid into small beds, and plowed 

 deep again in the spring. The cultivation of the fields where suc- 

 cory has been raised is different. If the soil is low, the succory is 

 taken up late in the fall, the field laid into small beds, and plowed 

 or spaded deep in the spring. If the soil is higher and drier, then 

 the succory remains in the ground until spring. In spading it out 

 the field is worked up deep, and is thus prepared simultaneously 

 for the reception of the flax seed. Hemp land remains untouched 

 through the winter, and is plowed deep in the spring. In Ilainault 

 and the vicinity of Courtrai, where seeding is done very early, the 



