QUALITIES OF THE GOLD OF PLEASURE. 323 



It may be asked, have you no further authority, from your own ex- 

 perience, for denouncing the Gold of Pleasure, than that of its acci- 

 dental growth amongst your flax ? I reply, last spring I appropriated 

 a small plot of ground to its culture, and found but too much reason to 

 acquiesce in Sir James Smith's exposition. 



Mr. Editor, it is far from my object unnecessarily to expose indivi- 

 duals to ridicule, because intermixed with artful and designing men 

 are many who, from want of experience of those things which they 

 advocate, unintentionally lead the anxious inquirer into the adoption 

 of fruitless schemes. To this number your correspondent, Mr. Gwilt, 

 appears to belong. For in his letter of the 14th inst. he observes, " a 

 little more experience, I confidently predict, will prove the Gold of 

 Pleasure to be superior to flax, in the opinion of the practical agricul 

 turist." Of Mr. Taylor, another of your correspondents, I have more 

 reason to complain, because he has taken extracts, nearly verbatim, 

 from my published statements and receipts for fattening cattle ; dis- 

 placing linseed for the Gold of Pleasure, and offering his mixture as a 

 substitute for linseed compound. Also, Mr. Taylor underrates the 

 produce of linseed per acre, which, instead of 16, averages, even on 

 very ordinary lands, from 20 to 26 bushels per acre ; indeed, in several 

 instances, the value of the crops exceeded that of the land. He, how- 

 ever, reminds the reader that " when the price of corn is very low 

 and cheerless, the Gold of Pleasure will never fail to produce the gold 

 with pleasure arid with abundance ;" the seed to be had opposite the 

 ominous Polytechnic Institution, price fifteen pence per Ib. What a 

 reduction ! and yet at that rate the acreable value still amounts to 140/., 

 besides an " abundance of chaff for horses, manure, and the manufac- 

 ture of whity-brown paper." I say ominous, because Polytechnic, 

 meaning many arts, is ominous of the many designs to which the farmer 

 is exposed. 



Let me, then, warn him against the dangerous Scylla and Charybdis 

 in Regent Street, and caution him to pursue the straightforward course 

 to Mark Lane, where factors many will offer him the noxious " Gold 

 of Pleasure " at about three farthings per Ib., or perhaps for the 

 trouble of sifting it from foreign linseed, in which it abounds ; noxious 

 on account of its unpalatable flavour and mal-adaptation to the fattening 

 of cattle. 



Mr. Skirving, the eminent horticulturist of Walton, assured me that 

 he had sown some of the Gold of Pleasure this year, and found it the 

 rankest weed imaginable. 



I was informed only yesterday, by two Belgians, that in their 

 country the stalks of this plant were used for brooms, the oil for lamps, 

 and the cake for manure, but never for an article of food. 



How indiscreet, then, the attempt to foist upon the country a per- 



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