304 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



purple and fine linen. The strength and durability 

 of the fabric, whether coarse or fine, and the snowy 

 whiteness and silky lustre of the cloth when 

 bleached, established flax as the finest fibre crop in 

 the agricultural countries of the world. 



The Lake-dwellers of Switzerland, who repre- 

 sent the Stone Age, grew the plant for its fibre, 

 which they wove into cloth. The household in- 

 dustries have brought the growing, spinning, and 

 weaving of flax down to the time when machinery 

 relieved human hands of much of the labor in- 

 volved. But machines have not made better nor 

 finer linen than the old-time hand looms produced. 



A large part of the difference in cost between 

 cotton and linen is due to the fact that machinery 

 has not yet taken much work away from the hand- 

 laborer in linen manufacture. Cotton machinery, 

 from the newly introduced pickers, and the gins, 

 to all the mill machinery, is a perfect system that 

 makes the machinery used in handling flax look 

 crude indeed. And it is crude. 



Flax is a delicate, branched plant, two or three 

 feet high, with narrow, long leaves, set opposite, 

 and numerous pale blue flowers, followed by globu- 

 lar capsules, each five-chambered, with two seeds 

 in each chamber. The shiny, slippery, brown 

 seeds are kept by every druggist. They are in 



