276 NORFOLK SOIL FAVOURABLE FOR FLAX. 



the ordeal of a vehement opposition ; but now, the opposers 

 have become its most zealous advocates ; and 1 venture to 

 predict that similar results will attend the cultivation of flax. 

 In truth, many agriculturists, in various parts of the kingdom, 

 who formerly expended hundreds in the purchase of foreign 

 oil-cake, do not now spend as many pence. This simple fact 

 speaks strongly in favour of home-grown and home-made cattle 

 food ; but volumes would be required to describe the indirect 

 advantages which must inevitably accrue to agriculture and 

 to the nation, would every farmer reject entirely the use of 

 foreign cake in favour of the produce of his own land. 



The whole process connected with the growth and prepara- 

 tion of the flax crop to the farmer, is far more simple than 

 writers in general would lead us to suppose. My own expe- 

 rience, for the last five years, often causes me to suspect that 

 the elaborate descriptions in books were intended rather to deter 

 than to encourage an extended culture of this important plant 

 in England. 



The wily Dutch were certainly the first to promulgate the 

 notion that it was impossible to obtain both fibre and seed at 

 the same time ; a notion which, however absurd, regulated the 

 practice of England, Scotland, and Ireland, till the year 1841 ; 

 many asserting that the steeping of the stalks with the seed 

 tended to improve the quality of flax, which is now found to be 

 an erroneous opinion, because flax itself contains oleaginous 

 matter that requires extraction instead of addition. 



Moreover, the necessary ploughing and harrowing were sup- 

 posed to be monster operations, totally beyond the abilities of 

 British farmers : but when our Belgian instructor landed in 

 England, he was surprised at the garden-like appearance of 

 our farms ; and, on his arrival in Norfolk, exclaimed, " Your 

 lands are already fit for sowing !" 



Singular as it may appear, a movement, in the above-named 

 year, accidentally simultaneous, took place in the north of Ire- 

 land, and at Trimingham, in Norfolk, to break through pre-- 

 judices, founded solely upon ignorance and idleness. Industry, 

 aided by the dictates of common sense, prevailed. For it is 

 recorded in the Report of the Flax Improvement Society of 

 Ireland, that from sixty to eighty thousand pounds' worth of 



