Ill 



FLAX. 



IIHLIT.Y. 



us 



lightly overlapping each other on a piece of clean nnooth grass which 

 bu been mown or fed off dune. Fine weather U essential to this part 

 of the process, as rain would now much injure the flax. It is occa- 

 sionally turned over, which in dune dexterously by punning a lung 

 lender rud under the rows and taking up the flax near the end which 

 overlap* the next row and turning; it quite over. Thus, when it U all 

 turned, it overlap* a* before, but in the contrary direction. It remain* 

 unread out upon the grass for a fortnight , inure or leu according to the 

 Minn, till the woody part become* brittle and some of the fins*t 

 fibre* separate from it of their own accord. It U then taken up, and 

 a* noon u it u quite dry it is tied up again in bundle*, and carried 

 into the darn to be broken and heckled at leisure during the winter. 



In the domestic manufacture the flax U broken or scutched at home, 

 when the weather prevents out-door work. The common break con- 

 auU of four wooden swords fixed in a frame, and another frame with 

 three sword* which fit in the interstices of the first by means of a 

 joint at one end. The flax is token in the left hand and placed between 

 the two frames, and the upper frame U pushed down briskly upon it. 

 It breaks the flax in four place*, and by moving the left h.-.n-l ami 

 rapidly repeating the stroke* with the right the whole liandful is soon 

 broken. It is then scutched by means of a board set upright in .1 

 block of wood so as to stand steady, in which is a horizontal slit about 

 three feet from the ground, the edge of which U thin. The broken 



Upright board to clear the flax of the wood. 



flax held in handsful in the left hand is inserted in this slit, so as to 

 project to the right, and a flat wooden sword of a peculiar shape is held 

 in the right hand ; with this the flax is repeatedly struck close to the 



Flat rword or scutcher. 



upright board, while the part which lie* in the slit is continually 

 changed by a motion of the left hand. This operation beats off all 

 the pieces of the wood which still adhere to the fibre, without breaking 

 it, and after a short time the flax is cleared of it and fit to be heckled. 

 But the operations of breaking and scutching are tedious and laborious 

 when thus executed by hand. A mill is now used (where large 

 quantities of flax are required for manufactures), having three fluted 

 cylinders, one of which is made to revolve by horse or water power 

 and carries the other two round. The flax plants are passed between 

 these cylinders while thus revolving, and the stalk, or boon, as it is 

 technically called, U by this means completely broken without injuring 

 the fibres. The scutching is accomplished in the same mill by means 

 of four arm* projecting from a horizontal axle, arranged so OB to strike 

 the boon in a slanting direction until the bark and other useless parts 

 of the plant are beaten away. In the last process by which flax is 

 prepared for the spinner, the luMing, the instrument employed, called 

 the heckle, is a square piece of wood studded with rows of iron teeth 

 about four inches long, and disposed in a quincunx order. The line- 

 new of the heckle U chosen with reference to the quality of the flax, 

 and heckle* differing in thia respect from each other are used at 

 different stages of the dressing, the coarsest first, and the finest to 

 give the last degree of smoothness and finish to the flax. The opera- 

 tion of heckling is performed by the workman grasping a handful of 

 flax by the middle and drawing first one side or end and then the 

 other through the teeth of the heckle until every particle of extra- 

 neous matter is removed, and the whole of the filament* are arranged 

 in distinct, even, and parallel fibre*. 



The cultivation of flax in this country, notwithstanding the energetic 

 advocacy of enthusiastic men, and even of societies established for t he- 

 purpose, has been if anything declining. Mr. Warner, of Trimming- 

 ham, near North Walsham, in Norfolk, advocated the cultivation of the 

 crop with great energy for several years, and induced many to attempt 

 it : and in Ireland a society for the encouragement of it* cultivation 

 wa* supported by a government donation, and employed Belgian and 



..thcr teacher* to explain in the different localities the bust met 

 cultivation. The system of steeping for week* in order t 

 the separation of tin- fibre, in no-,, rally displaced in this 



country by Bchenk's method of soaking for a d'. n vats 



of warm water ; and wherever manufactories on that plan have been 

 established, and a market thus provided for the straw, the crop - 

 its place in our rotations. Grown after clover or almost any gre< 

 with diligent and cleanly tillage and liberal manuring, a ci 

 -uili. i.-nt Imlk i obtained to repay cultivation , but the peculiar and 

 laborious character of its cultivation generally no far interferes with 

 the ordinary economy of labour on onr 

 general or increa.-ini; favourite with the Itritii-h la: 



I'l.KCHl'., a small work coi. xo faces, which form a 



angle. It is constructed at the foot or beyond tin- [.: {- ..f .1 ; 

 order to give an advanced muHquetry fire, when siu h is ilesir.il> 1 

 i' the ground, to see down a small ravine or ! 

 for instance, or to enfilade a besieger's trenches. 



Kl.KTA is a commentary in Latin on the entire body of 

 law, as it stood at the time when the author wrote. It is supposed to 

 have been written about the thirteenth year of the reign 01 

 as the statutes passed towards the end of his reign are not noticed, 

 while that of Westminster II. is often quoted. Tl: ivesas 



the reason for the title of his book, that it wan wi -it ten (hiring his con- 

 it in the Fleet Prison : who he was is not known. The author 

 has followed Bracton in the matter and manner of his \ 

 adopted his plan, and in many instances trniix-riU'd whole |vig' 

 him. He also followed Glanville in many instances. Various obscure 

 passages of both those writers are illustrated l>y Fleta. (Iteeve's 

 Eng. Law.') 



- The work was originally published by Selden from an ancient manu- 

 script in the Ottoman Library, tooother with a small treatise in law- 

 French, entitled ' Fet Asaavoir,' which is a coll< 



ing proceedings in actions, and a learned dissertation by Selden him- 

 self. Two editions only have been published in K upland, one in lii-17, 

 the other in 1685, which last corrects many hundred errors win 

 been caused in the first edition by an unskilful copyist (Bridgmai 

 is also printed in Houard's collection. [BniTTON, in Bioo. l)iv. | 

 sideiit Hcnault, in his ' Chronological Abridgment of th. 

 France,' tome i. p. 258, refers to Fleta as an historical autli 



FLEET PRISON, a metropolitan prison, pulled down in 181. 

 so called from its being situated by the side of the river Fleer 

 covered over. It was the prison to which persons Wi 

 the ecclesiastical courts, the courts of equity, 



Common Pleas; but was abolished by the 5 ft C Viet. o. -_'. which 

 established the Queen's Prison (formerly the Queen's Bench Pi i- 

 the only prison for debtors, bankrupts, and other persons who 

 formerly have been imprisoned in the Queen's Bench, the I 

 Marshalsea prison. 



FLEUK-DE-LIS, a term of blazonry for the flower which resembles 

 an iris, and which, previously to the French Revolution, wa 

 first aeuice, and then three, as representing semee, in the arms of 

 France. In old English it was called tin 1 fa origin ami 



history have been variously stated by the French antiquaries, 

 have considered it as the flower which grew on the banks of the river 

 Lys, which separated Artois and France from Flanders ; other. 

 that Louis VII., who began his reign in 1137, first adopted it in 

 allusion to his name of Zoyi, and because he was calle i 

 Fiona, or the Young. The coins of Louis VII. are allowed to be the 

 first on which the Jleur-dr-lis appears, as well as upou his smaller or 

 counter seal. The jHeur-dt-lit were originally borne M-IIHV, without 

 regard to number: according to coi 



first of the French monarchs who reduced them upon I 

 three. Le Blanc, however, remarks that three tlenr-du lis onlj 

 upon the seal of Philip de Valois, as well 

 seal of John, King of France, apju-nded to n charter of 1355. 

 upon the history of the fleur-de-lis may be seen in I'm,' 

 tionii.iire Universel,' v. ' Lis ; ' and more especially in Key' 

 dn Drapeau, des Couleurs, et des Insigu- 

 Svo, Par. 1837, torn. ii. I'pon crowns and the tops of 

 riiur-ilc-l'u was used by other nations as well as I 1 ranee from . 

 early period. 



I I.KXIBILITY is a property of bodies by which they yield trans- 

 versely, on the application of some power. There is no MI!. stance that 

 is not more or less flexible, because there is no substance that is per- 

 fectly rigid, and if the rigidity of a body be imperfect it must be to 

 some extent flexible. This property is distinct from ELASTICITY, as it 

 does not necessarily follow that the bodies acted on recover their 

 original figures when the power is removed. 



Fibres of wool, silk, hair, and the like, possess this property in a 

 high degree ; rods of wood, metal, and stone are flexible, and those 

 of the two last materials are more particularly so when heated. 

 The property is so much the more sensible as the fibres or rods are 

 IOMB r. 



\\ h'-n a body instead of yielding and changing its form undi 

 action of a force, breaks, it is said to be brittle. These qualities of 

 flexibility and brittleness are present in various degree : 

 bodies, and under certain conditions eitln 

 to the same body ; brittleneas, however, Iwing rather a cousequei 



