8 TLAX. 



merchants, to buy the flax of the farmer as it stands in 

 the field. After the weeding is completed, the farmer 

 has nothing more to do with, the crop, but to sell it and 

 to cart it to the merchant after it is pulled. The linier 

 pays for the pulling, thrashes the flax, and steeps it him- 

 self. He has to engage, oversee, and take the respon- 

 sibility of all those later details which prove so embar- 

 rassing to the English flax-grower. The seed, conse- 

 quently, always belongs to the linier, and not to the 

 farmer; and hence, as we shall see, arises the great 

 objection which English landlords ar^d very many farmers 

 make to the growth of flax. Mr. Warnes's plan of box- 

 feeding with the seed, which, in justice to him, we shall 

 further mention, goes some way to obviate the difficulty, 

 by causing as little as possible to be carried off the land ; 

 but if in France the farmer can grow on land which he 

 rents at forty francs the mesure, flax, which he can sell to 

 the linier for from four to five hundred francs the mesure, 

 and after paying for manure and oil-cake, besides plough- 

 ings, weedings, and seed, can still leave such a consider- 

 able surplus as to render the crop by far the most 

 profitable in his whole rotation, much more so than beans 

 and wheat if he can do this, there can be no doubt that 

 the English farmer is capable of arriving at the same 

 result, unless prevented by restrictions in his lease. 

 Mr. "Warnes strongly, and we think wrongly, condemns 

 "that particular species of factorship recommended by 

 the Belfast Society, viz., the buying of the farmer's flax 

 crops, and the removal of them, root and branch, from the 

 land." He hopes that landowners will condescend to 

 accept his advice, and " not permit their tenants to fall into 

 plans so deteriorating to the soil and to its dependants." 

 In France, as soon as the flax is carted off the land, 

 the linier undertakes its whole subsequent management 

 and manipulation, until it is in a state nearly ready to 

 spin, i. e., until the scutching is finished. He does not 

 usually do the combing, which is performed either at the 

 flax -mill, or by the small purchaser, who buys it for his 

 own household use. The scutchers employed by the 



