422 Abstract Report of Agricultural Discussions. 



If, however, you sow it in ordinaiy stale ground the weeds get a 

 start, the flax is overpowered, and no power on earth can weed it 

 afterwards. 



The next matter to be considered is the kind of seed ; and I may 

 observe that a good deal of nonsense has been sjioken and written about 

 Riga seed. I have tried it often, and think that, after having been 

 sown a few years in England or Ireland, it is far, very far superior 

 to the seed you get direct from Russia. Then, with regard to the 

 pulling of the flax. In Ireland tliey make a great mistake by sacrificing 

 the seed. They pull it when it is in a green state, and water it at 

 once. Now it is obviously impossible for all flax-growers to pursue 

 this plan ; moreover, if everybody watered the flax directly it was 

 pidled, how would you bo able to keep yom- stafi" of hands on all the 

 year ? We therefore, as they do in Belgimu, pull our flax with the seed 

 in it, stack it, thrash out the seed in the winter, next proceed to retting 

 the plant, and scutching it, and thus we keep our hands steadily em- 

 ployed for the whole year. 



The flax-instructors in Ireland are a class of men who arc very 

 highly paid, and, I am sorry to add, very ill-taught, for in many 

 instances they are teaching the farmers the old-fashioned and erroneous 

 plan of treating the flax. First of all, they recommend the pulling of 

 it without saving the seed, and where they do save the seed they 

 recommend that most absurd and ridiculous method of rippling. I 

 need hardly say to you that tlie ripi»ling-machine merely takes off the 

 pods, and that you have the trouble of getting the seed out of the pod 

 afterwards. They have a machine provided with conical rollers, A^ith 

 which they get out the seed ; but in using it there is a danger of 

 crushing the seed. I have no doubt that the safest and best plan is 

 to lay doAMi the flax in small bundles and beat out the seed with a bat 

 — a simple piece of wood about 15 inclics long and 2 or 3 inches 

 wide. 



With respect to machines for scutching flax, I am unable to discover 

 that a single improvement has been effected during the past ten years. 

 I am using the old scutching-stocks, and my friend, Mr. Arthur 

 Marshall, is using the same. He has twenty-eight of them running at 

 tliis time. The only improvement I observe in the manipulation of 

 flax, in the course of ten years, is that now adopted at Patrington, 

 which my friend, Mr. Marshall, has kindly permitted me to mention. 

 I allude to the wet-roller. Instead of jiutting the flax on the grass 

 and watering it, as soon as it comes from the pits — and whether it be 

 the hot or the cold water system it is the same — it is passed through 

 very powerful rollers, which squeeze out all the water. They never 

 grass it now ; but a quantity of little stakes are put into the gi-ound, 

 round which the flax is t^yined, and when it becomes dry it is tied 

 again in bundles and taken to the mill to be broken and scutched, or 

 it may be ricked at your convenience. 



My object being, not to give a set lecture, but simply to throw out 

 a few hints that may cKcit discussion, I may mention that some years 

 ago I myself invented a machine designed to jierform the whole of 

 these processes of flax-dressing — to break up the flax without the 



