298 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



strongly condemned, as the flax is always injured, its oily por 

 tions being dried out by fire. 



8. THE COURTRAY METHOD. On the Continent, at Courtray, 

 from which some of the best flax is obtained, they practise a 

 method of curing their flax which has been adopted in Ireland, 

 with much success, but which involves more trouble than the 

 usual process. &quot; As soon as pulled, the flax is stooked, without 

 binding it. The handful s are set up resting against each other, 

 the root ends spread out, and the tops joining like the letter A, 

 forming stooks about eight feet long, with a short strap keeping 

 the ends firm. In this way it will resist wind and rain well, and 

 dry fast. In eight or ten days, it may be bound up in small 

 bundles, carried to the ripple, and steeped or it may be 

 stacked in the field or put into a barn, the seed to be taken off at 

 leisure, in the winter, and the flax steeped in the ensuing spring.&quot; 

 This leaves the farmer an opportunity of choosing the most 

 leisure and convenient season for attending to his flax product. 

 It is understood that flax improves in the stack for two or three 

 years ; but the danger of the flax suffering from being put away, 

 in a stack, green, is to be considered; and the rippling and 

 steeping it immediately after being pulled may prove a consider 

 able saving of labor over that of stacking it at first. 



9. BREAKING AND SCUTCHING. Machines have been invented, 

 in Ireland, for breaking and scutching, or hatchelling } or swin 

 gling, as it is called in the United States, the flax crop. The 

 break seems fitted to do its work well. It is composed of three 

 cylindrical rollers, grooved like the nuts of a cider-mill, and re 

 volving against each other. The scutching machine has several 

 arms made to perform about a hundred and eighty revolutions in 

 a minute ; but the objection to it is, that it drives the wood or 

 hull into the flax, and does not leave it in that clean and even 

 state which is produced by the hand. There can be little doubt 

 that experience and ingenuity will improve these, or invent 

 other machines, which may prove more suitable to the object. 

 It certainly would not be difficult to make an improvement upon 

 the method of breaking flax practised in Ireland before the im 

 proved machines came to be invented, when it was the custom 



