52 FLAX. 



uses. The method commonly employed to separate the 

 fibre from this gummy resinous substance is decomposi- 

 tion by means of the fermentation of putrefaction. This 

 is effected by steeping the flax in still or stagnant water. 

 The necessary decomposition may be made to take place 

 without immersing the flax in water at all, by exposing it 

 on a meadow to the rains and the dews. But the plan is 

 uncertain, depending entirely upon the whim of that 

 fickle agent the weather; it is also more tedious, and 

 w r hen made very tedious by the continuation of drought, 

 the quality of the sample is seriously injured. The 

 growers, whose method we are now specially following, 

 always steep their flax. 



Other means have been attempted to supplant the 

 process of steeping flax, such as the agency of chemicals, 

 and of steam and boiling water. "We are sorry to be, as 

 yet, unable to recommend any of these methods as com- 

 pletely successful. The old-fashioned plan of steeping 

 still answers better on the whole than any other mode 

 that has hitherto been discovered.. This is a great pity ; 

 because flax-steeping, it must be confessed, has many 

 disadvantages attending it. In the first place, it is an 

 unhealthy and offensive process. The smell which the 

 ditches and ponds occasionally emit, is all but unbearable ; 

 so also is the odour of the flax when taken out of the 

 w r ater. It is known that the exhalations from sodden 

 and decaying vegetables are the cause of the miasms 

 which sow the seeds of agues and all that fearful class of 

 diseases. Some persons near Lille, who had the impru- 

 dence to bathe in a pond in which flax had been steeped, 

 were almost immediately seized with intermittent fever. 

 The water wherein flax has been steeped, if let out into 

 a larger pond or stream, is also fatal to the fish. These 

 are really serious evils ; but happily the only ones con- 

 nected with the growth of flax. 



Secondly : not only are many farms which are most 

 suitable for flax-growing, defective in the quantity of water 

 necessary for steeping they have not enough ponds and 

 ditches in. their neighbourhood, to be able to devote 



