292 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



complaint made of the American hops, in the English market, 

 where they are considered greatly inferior to those grown among 

 themselves, is, that they are not well cured, nor assorted. 

 The profits of the cultivation of hops are sometimes very large. 

 A friend told me that he had known one hundred pounds, as 

 profit, realized from a single acre. But such is a very rare 

 example. Many good fortunes have been made in. the business, 

 but very severe losses have been sustained ; and the great un 

 certainties of the result are sufficient to deter any. but the 

 most bold and enterprising. 



C VII. FLAX. 



1. GENERAL VIEWS. The cultivation of flax has prevailed 

 to a very limited degree in England ; I saw nothing of it in 

 Scotland j but in Ireland it is pursued to a considerable 

 extent, and yearly with increasing success. Two or three 

 things have served, heretofore, to hinder its cultivation. The 

 first has been the opinion, that it is a very scourging or exhaust 

 ing crop, and the second, the difficulties of curing it, and the 

 inferior quality of the article, when produced. The want of a 

 market, likewise, for the produce, operated against its cultivation. 

 Out of the cultivation has arisen the market ; and the product 

 and the demand appear to be going on with an equal step. 



With respect to the exhaustion of the soil, if reliance is to be 

 placed upon chemical analysis, then the fibre of the plant, the 

 flax properly so speaking, is wholly derived from the atmosphere. 

 This is the result come to by the eminent Dr. Kane, professor 

 of chemistry, in Dublin, upon a chemical analysis of the flax 

 plant ; and therefore, if the other portions of the plant are, in 

 any form, returned to the soil, there will be no impoverishment, 

 and flax may be as often cultivated upon the same soil as any 

 other crop. How far this question may be considered as settled 

 by such an examination, I shall leave others to determine ; but ex 

 perience proves that, where the land is properly managed, flax may, 

 with success, be much oftener repeated on the same land, than 

 it was formerly supposed advisable to do it. In what form these 



