168 PROCESS OF GROWING AND PREPARING FLAX. 



land is laid into small beds, six to eight feet wide, with furrows 

 one tv oue and a half feet deep, in the fall. 



On a cold soil, straw manure from cattle is plowed under, in the 

 fall. This is deemed proper, because then the soil remains loose, 

 penetrable to moisture, and may be sown earlier, especially if it 

 was laid into small beds. In the neighborhood of Bruegge, Thour- 

 hout, etc., where much flax seed is sown in a generally dry soil, in 

 May, much liquid manure is hauled on the land, in the winter or 

 shortly before seeding. In cultivating as well as in manuring, the 

 site and condition of the field and the yet unexhausted power of 

 the old manure are taken into consideration. A naturally strong 

 soil and a field in which there is much old manure, is not manured 

 for the flax crops, because otherwise a long, but coarse and inferior 

 article would be raised. To grow flax on poor land, even if fertil- 

 ized by straw manure, will not give satisfaction, because flax re- 

 quires the power derived from the old manure yet remaining in the 

 soil. The Belgian flax-grower, therefore, endeavors always to use 

 such manure for flax as will soon, take elfect, and mostly applies 

 liquid manure. In order to obtain a good supply of this, the Bel- 

 gians have their cattle stalls paved, so that the urine is drained 

 into reservoirs constructed either beside or below the stalls. The 

 solid exci'ements are also shoveled into these reservoirs, and be- 

 sides, the stalls are rinsed with water twice or thrice a day. If 

 this supply of liquid manure is yet insufficient, rape cakes are dis- 

 solved in water, and human excrements are added besides. But 

 no water from human excrements, and only such as has received a 

 weak solution of rape cake, is brought upon a warm soil, because 

 otherwise the flax will be burned upon the halm, in warm and dry 

 weather. Thus, if withered halms are found in the flax, in dry 

 summers, they are most numerous where the field has been ma- 

 nured v/ith liquid manure mixed with a solution of rape cake and 

 other ingredients. In wet weather, flax in such ground will fall 

 down. On poor, sandy soil a greater quantity of rape cake may 

 be used. The rape cakes are broken to pieces and the dissolution 

 is to take place only two or three days before being brought upon 

 the land ; an earlier solution, so that a fermentation takes place in 

 the reservoir, is deemed injurious. Dry rape cakes pounded into 

 meal and strewed upon the field likewise have a good eficct. Ash- 

 es are very good, but wood ashes are preferable to coal ashes. 

 Hemp and poppy cakes are likewise used as manure ; but linseed 

 cakes are deemed very injurious on flax fields. 



