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They, too, are brown in colour, and smooth, and flat. Inside 

 they are almost white. These seed-vessels are sometimes 

 called bolls, and when the flax is in seed it is said to 

 be boiled. 



Harvesting. Flax has to be pulled up by the roots, and the 

 best time for doing this, if a fine solid fibre is required, is 

 just before the seeds begin to 

 ripen. 



Rippling. ' To rip ' is to tear 

 something away from something 

 else, and a ripple is an instrument 

 for separating the seeds from the 

 stalks of flax. It consists of 

 a comb having pointed iron teeth 

 about eighteen inches long. This 

 comb is fixed in a wooden frame 

 and the flax is pulled through it ; 

 the space between the teeth is 

 too small for the seeds to pass, 

 and they fall on to the ground 

 below. 



Retting. When the seeds have 

 been removed, the stalks have to 

 be steeped in water until they 

 begin to ret or rot. Besides the 

 fibres from which linen is woven, 

 the stalks contain a woody core, 



and the object of retting is to remove the gummy matter 

 which binds the fibres to this core. 



Bundles of flax are placed upright in a shallow pond, with 

 their roots downwards, and kept immersed for about a fort- 

 night. At the end of that time it is found that the woody part 

 can be separated from the fibre, and the bundles are then taken 

 out from the water and spread upon grass for a few days to dry. 

 The water in which flax is retted must be soft water ; in 

 some countries the flax is simply retted by exposure to moist 



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