6 FLAX. 



may state that in former reigns laws were enacted, pre- 

 miums offered, and fines imposed, to enforce the cultiva- 

 tion of flax and hemp in England. Since then, the great 

 impediment to the more extended growth of the former 

 plant particularly, has been the protective duties on 

 wheat, which rendered the cultivation of that grain so 

 profitable, as to throw other crops into comparative 

 neglect and obsoleteness. The late abolition of those 

 duties, combined with the course of political events, have 

 already turned the tables ; holders of flax and hemp on 

 the continent are unwilling to sell, expecting a rise in 

 price ; and there can be no doubt that in England also 

 flax now promises to be the most remunerative crop that 

 can be grown on land capable of producing it. It is 

 easier, however, to desire the restoration of a long-lost 

 art, for such flax-farming actually is, than to accom- 

 plish the wish, after old-experienced hands have long 

 since mouldered in the grave, and their valued practical 

 maxims and habits have been clean forgotten years and 

 years ago. But it is scarcely necessary, at the present 

 juncture, to thrust the subject forcibly and against the 

 grain upon the attention of observant agriculturists. 

 Flax must soon urge its own claims, and will establish 

 itself in England by its sole unaided intrinsic merits. 

 The measures of the late Sir Eobert Peel will prove the 

 ultimate cause of the reintroduction of the crop. Farmers 

 will give it a permanent place in their rotation, and their 

 labourers will reap the benefit as well as themselves. 



In spite of the well-meant efforts that have been made 

 by Mr. Warnes, of Trimingham, in Norfolk, and other 

 adventurous agriculturists, flax-culture cannot yet be said 

 to have made a fresh start in England, or to show symp- 

 toms of vigorous regeneration. We attribute the failure 

 in great part to the circumstance that, with tlds crop, the 

 English farmer has too many little details to attend to 

 after it is grown. It is more than he can manage him- 

 self, with all his other complicated affairs, to grow flax, 

 and then to prepare it to a proper state to be sold to the 

 spinner. For all these after-processes, too, he has to 



