64* FLAX. 



being of willow. The first packet being beaten 

 enough, he steps a few inches to the right or left, 

 and beats the next portion, till the whole is bruised 

 sufficiently. He then takes up the flax in separate hand- 

 fuls, and disposes them in a row 

 leaning against each other cross- 

 wise, like the letter X several 

 times repeated ; or sometimes 

 in a circular heap, crossing each 

 other like the spokes of a wheel 

 (see fig. iv.), to keep each handful 

 distinct, for convenience during 

 the crushing and the scutching : 

 till the scutching is finished and 

 the flax is in a state ready to be weighed, it is care- 

 fully kept in separate handfuls. 



The next implement brought into play is called in 

 English, a "break," or "breaker;" in some parts of 

 France it is styled a brie, or a broie. In the most 

 productive flax districts it is known by the appropriate 

 term of a l)raque, braques meaning the pincers of a 

 lobster's claw. Our woodcut will explain its construc- 

 tion and object. All other published figures which we 

 have seen of this tool, represent it of much too slight 

 a build. It is a formidable, though clumsy, piece of 

 mechanism (the clumsier the better), consisting of an 

 under fixed jaw, and an upper inoveable one, contrived to 

 chew and gnaw the flax as severely as possible, without 

 actually biting and dividing it. The workman takes 

 a handful of the malleted flax in his left hand, lifts up 

 the upper jaw of the braque with his right, and then with 

 his right arm, which acts as the muscle of the upper jaw, 

 he causes it to crunch the flax, by moving it up and down. 

 At each motion and bite of the jaw, the place of the flax 

 is shifted, so that the woody stem is broken up in many 

 places along its whole length. A shake or two gets rid 

 of a portion of the shattered stalk, the fibre remaining all 

 the while entire. When sufficiently braqued, or broken 

 up, the handful of flax receives a slight twist, and is 



