332 
While this affords a fair margin of profit, the value of this industry 
will be greatly enhanced if the process referred to results in the 
manufacture of tow from the stalks, as the straw averages 1} tons 
to the acre, which would yield about 25 per cent. of tow. The 
refuse also can be used for paper-making.” Apparently, in the same 
year, however, the fibre was a recognised asset, for the “ Bulletin 
of the Imperial Institute,” vol. ix, 1911, p. 378, records the fact that 
439 tons of fibre, valued at £17,509 were exported to the United 
States in 1910, and a year previously 594 tons of fibre, worth 
£29,120, were exported to the same country. 
The position of flax in Canada is, however, clearly indicated in 
Bulletin 59, “The Flax Plant ; its cultivation for Seed and Fibre,” 
pp. 1-13, of the Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa. It is there 
definitely stated that flax has been grown for its fibre in some parts 
of western Ontario for many years. It is most widely grown for its 
seed in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In 1906, Saskat- 
chewan, with the largest acreage of 108,834 acres, produced 
1,504,814 bushels of seed. The produce of the same region in 
1910 was 3,044,138 bushels. Experiments are now being conducted 
at various Dominion Experimental Farms, with a view to securing 
types of plants yielding heavy crops of fibre and seed, and of dis- 
covering improved and more economic methods of handling than 
already exist. The conclusion appears to have been arrived at 
that Manitoba and Ontario seed produces a heavier crop of seed 
than that imported from Russia and Holland. The heaviest yield- 
ing kind, however, is one raised in Minnesota, and named Minnesota 
per ac 
_ India.—An exhaustive account of the cultivation of flax in India 
is given by Sir G. Watt in his work on “ The Commercial Products 
of India,” pp. 719-731. The plant is grown there more for the 
sake of its seed than for its fibre, although interest in fibre produc- 
tion is apparently on the increase. In the years 1906-7 the acreage 
of land carrying a pure flax or linseed crop was returned at 3,028,200 
acres, whilst 633,000 acres were sown with a mixed crop of linseed 
and other oil-producing seeds. 
he chief centre of the industry, as given by Sir G. Waitt, is 
Bengal, followed closely by the Central Provinces and Berar. 
Then come the United Provinces; Bombay and Sind ; Panjab ; 
Hyderabad, Central India and Rajputana; Madras, Assam and 
Burma. The amount grown in some of these regions is, however, 
of comparatively little importance. The following details are taken 
from p. 726 of the above-mentioned work :—“It is thus a crop 
that may be spoken of as produced most abundantly within the 
indigo districts. At all events it is mainly grown, so far as Bengal 
is concerned, in Tirhut and Bihar, Mukerji (Handbook Ind, Agre., 
