NECESSARY APPARATUS FOR LINSEED COMPOUND. 247 



terms is the part that 1 have engaged to perform. It will be 

 the business of the inquirer to put it into practice ; and then 

 only will he be brought to believe that results so great can 

 flow from expedients so simple. Had my recommendations 

 emanated from analytical rather than from practical research, 

 the compound been offered at an enormous profit, and its pro- 

 perties blazoned by some eminent City chemist, thousands 

 would have flocked to the shrine of Agricultural nostrums, 

 thousands of pounds been offered as a willing sacrifice, and ten 

 thousand voices engaged in lauding the Seminum Linorum 

 Compositions. The intrinsic merit of the linseed compounds, 

 like every thing else of real advantage to agriculture, centres 

 in simplicity. Those who veil their discoveries in mystery for 

 the sake of gain, or mar their utility by patent rights, too 

 often injure the cause they profess to support, and seldom reap 

 for themselves more than disappointed vanity. 



The only apparatus required for the system I recommend 

 is a linseed-crusher, an iron copper, a hand-cup, a stirrer, one 

 or two half-hogsheads, two or three pails, and a wooden ram- 

 mer. These will cost about 127. ; but if proper cylinders were 

 attached to mills, as they now are in the neighbourhood of 

 North Walsham, the machine could be dispensed with, and the 

 outlay reduced to about 2/. Large coppers are found incon- 

 venient for stirring when compounds are made with the meal 

 of peas, beans, &c. The sizes most in use contain from thirty 

 to forty gallons. Upon large farms it will be 

 desirable to have two; one smaller than the 

 other. The stirrer is an iron-ribbed spoon 

 fastened to a shaft of wood four feet long, and 

 somewhat less than the handle of a pick. The 

 rammer is three feet long, about five inches 

 square at the bottom, and two and a half at the 

 top, through which a pin fourteen inches long is 

 passed for the convenience of being used with 

 both hands ; mine is nothing more than one end 

 of a broken axle of a cart, with a stick thrust through the linch- 

 pin hole. This happened to be at hand when the experiments 

 were first made upon my premises five years ago, and has been 

 in use ever since. 



