LINUM USITATISSIMUM. ORD. XXXII. Gruinaics. | 567 
the capsule is globular, divided into five valves, and ten cells: 
the seeds are solitary, glossy, and of a flattish oval shape, It is a 
native of Britain, and grows in corn fields and sandy pastures: the 
flowers appear in July. 
Flax ° is an article of such an extensive utility for various 
ceconomical purposes, that the plant which furnishes it has obtained 
the trivial name of usitatissimum ; and when it is considered that 
its seeds afford an oil equally useful in arts and in medicine, it 
may well be deemed an object of national importance. Sensible 
of this, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, 
and Commerce, has laudably endeavoured to promote and extend 
the cultivation of this plant in Britain, and not without success. 
But still the greatest part of Flax and Linseed used in this country 
is the growth of the northern parts of Europe, where it is cultivated 
most abundantly. 
«« The seeds have an unctuous mucilaginous sweetish taste, but’ 
no remarkable smell; on expression, they yield a large quantity 
of oil, which, when carefully drawn without the application of 
heat, has novparticular taste or flavour:' in some properties it 
differs considerably from most of the other oils of this kind; not 
congealing in winter; not forming a solid soap with fixed alkaline 
salts; * acting more powerfully as a menstruum on sulphureous 
bodies, than any other expressed oil that has been tried. The 
seeds, boiled in water, yield a large proportion of a strong flavour- 
less mucilage: to rectified spirit they give out little or nothing.’’* 
b The bark of the plant is composed of numerous small tough longitudinal 
fibres, connected together with a glutinous matter which is dissolved by mace~ 
ration in water, leaving the naked fibres, which are then to be dried and beaten,. 
by which means the inner membranous parts are easily separated; after this 
it is combed, and fit to be spun into thread.—It has been observed that the water 
in which this bark has been macerated, becomes poisonous to cattle, and on this 
account the practice of steeping it in any running stream or common pond, was 
prohibited by Statute 33d Henry VILL. cap. 17. ; 
# Geoffroy, Mem. de Vacad, des scien. de Paris Vann, 1741, 
« Lewis, M. M. p. 397. 
