540 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



seeds were beautiful, and brilliant, and large, yet the plant at 

 tained a comparatively small height. 



The Flemish farmers approve of changing their seed fre 

 quently. It is said that a crop from seed which has been twice 

 sown in Belgium is inferior in quantity, owing to this circum 

 stance. I am an unbeliever in the deterioration of any plant on 

 account of continuing the seed, where proper pains are taken to 

 get, by selection and care, the best seed only from that plant. 

 The seed preferred in Flanders is the seed brought from Riga. 

 There are other places, however, from which seed is brought, 

 the fibre produced from which is said to be finer than that from 

 Riga. 



The seed to be chosen should be heavy and brilliant, of a gold 

 color, or a clear brown, and especially clean. It may be tried in 

 water ; and if much of it floats upon the surface, it is owing to 

 the imperfection of the seed. It may be tried by throwing some 

 little into the fire, to determine its oily properties ; and it may be 

 laid upon a wet blanket or cloth, to determine its germinative 

 poAvers. Seed which is black, or seed which has been much 

 heated, is wholly unfit for sowing. 



, The ground for flax cannot be prepared with too much care. 

 A very line crop of flax is often obtained on grass land, recently 

 turned over, and this even without manure. The land in this 

 case is carefully ploughed, rolled, lightly harrowed, and then 

 sowed, and the seed lightly harrowed or brushed in. The crop 

 which precedes flax is often oats or rye, but especially potatoes. 

 The land, if in stubble or in potatoes, is carefully ploughed in 

 the autumn, and then twice again in the spring ; and it requires 

 to be most thoroughly cleaned, and kept clean of weeds. 



It is commonly sown thickly. Thick sowing tends to render 

 the stalks fine and straight, without branching. One hundred 

 and sixty pounds of seed is the usual allowance to an acre, 

 which seems a large quantity. The land is sometimes manured 

 in the year in which it is sown. In this case it is ploughed 

 early, say in March, and thoroughly wrought, and then rolled 

 smooth and hard. The land is then manured with thirty 

 bushels per acre of peat ashes from Holland, or what is called 

 Dutch ashes, and with a good dressing of liquid manure from 

 the urine cistern, in which the cakes of colza have been dis 

 solved ; and this is mixed, likewise, with some manure from the 



