64 FLAX CULTURE AND PREPARATION 



artificially drying them for feeding purposes. The deseeded 

 straw is immediately retted, dried, and scutched. 



2. Pulling the flax and arranging the beets in long stocks, 

 or gaiting, to dry in the field ; deseeding, cleaning, and drying 

 the bolls after which they are stored until required for sowing. 

 The flax straw may then be retted, dried, and scutched without 

 further delay, or as an alternative, the deseeded flax straw 

 may be stacked until the following spring and then dew or 

 pond retted, dried and scutched. 



3. The pulled flax may be dried in stooks, stacked and 

 deseeded at will during the winter months and dew retted or 

 steeped in the spring as convenient. 



4. A portion of the flax crop may be treated as in the case 

 of No. 2, and the remainder as No. 3. 



65. Flax Culture a National Industry Ireland and Belgium. 

 The various foregoing choices of harvesting make flax a very 

 desirable farm crop. The farmer can have as much remunera- 

 tive work as he chooses and according to the labour which 

 he has available. Any remunerative scheme which tends to 

 increase the number of workers in the country districts is a 

 national advantage. The industrial classes with means are 

 always relatively the best cash spenders in any market. A 

 relatively extensive peasantry provided with sufficient and 

 remunerative employment always tends to generate an 

 industrious and contented people who are indirectly the main 

 spring and most stable pillars of prosperity in any country. 



Agriculture is still the chief national industry in the British 

 Isles, particularly in Ireland, and when combined with 

 commerce constitutes an important national asset. 



The cultivation of flax is an advantageous crop in the rotation 

 series of farm crops. In Ireland it has frequently been 

 denominated the " Rent-paying crop," and in Belgium the 

 " Golden crop." 



The Belgians, in the earliest decades of the nineteenth 

 century, were in great poverty but by the aid of British gold 

 and the encouragement given by England to the cultivation 



