12 FLAX. 



grown singly and exposed to light and air, but which 

 runs up straight and slim, without scarcely branching at 

 all, when it is crowded in its seed-bed. Its height, in 

 ordinary ground, is from a foot-and-a-half to two feet ; 

 on better soils, under good cultivation, it reaches a yard ; 

 and extraordinary samples sometimes come to hand, 

 which display a flax-stem four feet in height. The stalks 

 are covered with a bark or rind, the filaments of which 

 when separated from extraneous matter, supply the raw 

 material from which every variety of linen fabric is 

 made. The leaves are of a bright and delicate green, 

 sessile, or not mounted on foot-stalks, and linear. The 

 ilowers are of a light sky-blue, solitary, that is, not clus- 

 tered in bunches, but either produced at the tip of a 

 twig, or seated in the nook between the leaf and the 

 stem. Each flower is followed by a globular capsule, 

 which ought to contain ten flat, shining, and tawny 

 seeds. 



A white-flowered variety of flax is found in the Pays 

 de Waes, where it is mostly employed to be worked up 

 with hemp. It is a coarse, productive, and vigorous plant; 

 but its culture is so restricted that we only mention it 

 here to avoid the charge of careless omission. Any 

 further allusion to the numerous other species of the 

 genus flax, some of which are grown as ornamental 

 plants, but none for economical purposes, would be mis- 

 placed in the pages with which w r e are now occupied. 



THE SO-CALLED YAETOUS KINDS 03? TLAX, AND THEIR 

 SEED. 



Some French agricultural writers distinguish several 

 supposed varieties of common flax, which, however, they 

 truly acknowledge to be entirely due to the mode of 

 culture. Although we feel it our duty to mention them, 

 we request the reader not to pay too much attention nor 

 to give too much faith to their presumed distinctness, 

 but to devote his whole thoughts to the much more im- 

 portant points of soil and culture, with reference to any 



