440 On the Culture and Preparation of Hemp 



Somrsct, and must have been swingled before it was sent 

 to tfe different ports it was shipped at for this country. 

 Theqving the former bounty on the growth, and increas- 

 ing 1 on hemp and flax, would encourasre the growth ; but 

 if glen on the number of acres sown, the grower, as his 

 groud would be in high erder for a crop of turnips and 

 whea after, might be careless about hii crop of hemp, as 

 the bunty, to be worth notice, must be worih more than 

 the v.lue of the seed in common years and the labour of 

 sowiitr. 



HfcTip in this county and the next is never sown in new 

 grouid fresh broke up, but flax always by choice, when 

 fresh ground can be got. Mr. John Pitfield is going to 

 breakup great part of the West Clift at Bridport Harbour, 

 and stw it with ilax this season. The writer, while on the 

 subjec, of hemp, is led to mention, that when travelling in 

 the year 1792, in the province ot Massachusets near Bos- 

 ton, ia North America, was assured that considerable quan- 

 tifies af hemp were raised in the township of Sunberry, 

 about ten miles from Boston, and that it was always raised 

 on the same ground every year, no other crop being sown 

 in thei' hemp lands, and that it was manured every year, at 

 the rate of about ten tons of manure to the acre of hemp. 

 Respecting seed, he cannot learn that there is any for sale 

 at Bridport, with the buyers who purchase it up for the 

 growers at the hemp harvest, and he expects that very little 

 can be got from the growers round here. Somersetshire is 

 a more likely place to get it, as he has known some of the 

 hemp farmers to have upwards of an hundred acres of hemp 

 in one season; round this they generally are only in a small 

 way. A change of hemp seed is much wanted in Somer- 

 set and Dorset. Trials have been made two or three times 

 to get it from Russia ; but iT is not possible to get new seed 

 from the interior early enough in the fall at the shipping 

 ports, and some old seed which has been shipped has not 

 answered the purpose ; if new could have been got, it would 

 as generally have been used for a change, as the new Riga 

 barrel flax seed is by the flax-growers. As the seed sown in 

 Russia was considered a good sample, and its appearance 

 much liked, possibly it might, at a future period, be ob- 

 tained in the fall from Odesea, or some other port on the 

 Black Sea, as it is understood that a good deal of hemp 

 shipped at Riga and St. Pttersburgh grows much nearer to 

 the black Sea than the Baltic; or possibly the seed of the 

 Italian hemp raised in the neighbourhood of Bologna, or 

 that of America, might be obtained in time to answer. 



Perhaps 



