1C FLAX. 



receives the denomination of I'm d'apres tonne, or second* 

 hand tun flax, and is held in corresponding estimation. 



At the present moment it is especially to the purpose 

 to ask the question, whether it is always indispensably 

 necessary to obtain our seed-flax from so great a distance 

 in order to insure a first-rate crop. What might appear 

 to confirm the usually affirmative opinion held by growers 

 upon this subject, is the curious fact that this stranger 

 seed, at first so vigorous, gradually declines from year to 

 year ; and that seed grown on the spot itself, or in its 

 immediate environs, is never capable of replacing it com- 

 pletely. A circumstance corroborative of this assertion 

 is to be found in what happened when a new variety of 

 hemp was brought from China to France. At first, it 

 grew vigorously, running up to an enormous and almost 

 incredible height. Afterwards it insensibly diminished 

 till it fell to the level of ordinary hemp. Lastly, a fur- 

 ther confirmation, is the remark which many learned 

 agriculturists have made, that several plants whose cul- 

 ture on -a large scale is profitable, when it is suited to 

 the climate, and when it is well executed (both which 

 conditions are indispensable to its success,) grow there at 

 first more vigorously than they afterwards do at the end 

 of a period which is more or less removed from the 

 original date of their first introduction. Perhaps the 

 potato may be included in this category. But, what at 

 once shows the necessity for a change of seed, and what 

 also proves that there is no necessity that this seed should 

 be Eussian, and no other, is the assertion of M. Dubois 

 de Donilac, who (after a long residence in Livonia, from 

 whence we derive the Higa flax-seed, and where he ex- 

 amined with the most careful attention everything relat- 

 ing to the culture and manipulation of flax and hemp) 

 tells us that there, exactly the same as elsewhere, a weak- 

 ness and degeneracy is perceived in the seed, both of flax 

 and hemp, after the third year ; that they are obliged to 

 renew it after the fifth harvest, at the very latest ; that 

 the fresh seed which the Livonians employ is mostly 

 derived from Silesia, but that tliey likewise procure it from 



