,J. V. KVKE AND K. A. FiSIIEH 



i:!l 



Frequent Change of Seed. 



Ill Russia, the country from which the best flax seed is obtainable, 

 change of seed is not an agricultural consideration. The crops are 

 almost invariably grown from seed of the previous harvest and in many 

 cases the farmers have had their seed in the family for more than 

 20 years'. 



In all other European countries, however, emphasis is laid upon the 

 necessity of frequently changing flax seed, and the same practice has 

 been recommended in the case of linseed. It is not known definitely, 

 however, whether continuous growing from seed of the previous year's 

 crop has any effect on the oil content of the seed and in this connection 

 very few data are available. In one case^ Riga seed was sown in Essex 

 in 1911 and the oil content of the resulting seed was 35-66%. The 

 seed from this crop was sown in 1912 when it produced seed containing 

 only 26-73 % of oil. Such a decrease (nearly 9 per cent.) is, however, 

 very unusual whatever the cultural conditions may be and it is probably 

 due to some other cause than the one in question. Personally, we have 

 never come across any sample of seed with such a low oil content as 

 this; the lowest we have met with was in a sample discovered by one 

 of us growing wild in the south of Ireland and consisting of very small 

 seed with a particularly hard and thick seed coat. This had an oil 

 content of 29-07%. 



The only other data available, as far as we have been able to discover, 

 are some given by Leather. He grew specimens of linseed rich in oil, 

 obtained from various parts of India, at Lyallpur in the Punjab at 

 farms where seed of poor quality was generally produced and, as the 

 subjoined table shows, found a small but continuous decrease in oil 

 throughout two years. 



1 J. V. Eyre, Sup. to Journal Bd. of Agric. No. 12, Jan. 1914, p. 17. 

 '- Jotiniai Bd. of Agric. Vol. xx. No. 5 (Aug. 1913), p. 381. 



