FLAX. 299 



to break it with a cart-wheel upon the road, and when they had 

 no wheel, &quot; the cultivator would accost a gentleman, passing in 

 a gig, with a l Please yer honor, will ye gie uz a rowl ? 



10. USES OF THE SEED. I have already suggested the con 

 clusion to which many intelligent farmers have arrived, that flax 

 is not a particularly exhausting crop, when the refuse of the crop 

 is returned to the soil, and the seed applied to the feeding of ani 

 mals. I saw very remarkable effects produced in a field of oats, 

 where the water in which the flax had been steeped was applied 

 as a manure. In my opinion, no manure could have been more 

 efficacious ; and so it has proved wherever it has been tried. But 

 yet greater benefits are calculated upon, to be derived from the 

 seed when used as feed for fattening stock, and in their manure, 

 for enriching the land. One of the most successful farmers I 

 have met with on this side of the water, and one whose premises, 

 in every department, exhibited the strongest proofs of industry, 

 skill, and intelligence, and who, more than all this, has risen 

 from the humble position of a tenant farmer, with very small 

 means, to that of an independent landholder, and has brought up 

 a large family, and planted three sons, as tenant farmers, around 

 him, with ample capital to manage their farms, attributed much 

 of his successful husbandry to a very liberal supply of linseed 

 oil cake to his fatting cattle and sheep. His farm consisted of 

 two hundred and fifty acres, and he annually expended two hun 

 dred and twenty-five pounds, or more than one thousand one 

 hundred dollars, for oil cake. This enabled him to turn off his 

 stock in good condition ; this gave him ample means of enriching 

 his land ; and this laid the foundation of some of the best crops 

 grown in the country. The opinion of an experimenter so ob 

 serving arid successful must have great weight in the case. 

 Many farmers consume fifty and one hundred tons per year, and 

 some, within my knowledge, to the amount of two hundred tons 

 per year. But if the linseed oil cake is valuable, still more val 

 uable is the seed itself, from which the cake is formed, before 

 the oil is expressed. The seed is not a new article to be used in 

 the feeding of stock, and its great efficacy in fattening both 

 cattle and sheep, and in increasing the secretions of milk, when 

 given to cows, I have myself repeatedly experienced. 



