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thrown on one side, in a heap with others of its kind, to 

 undergo the process of scutching. Meanwhile it is 

 necessary to keep the flax as dry as possible. If, for 

 instance, the workman intends to defer till to-morrow 

 morning the scutching of the flax which he has braqued 

 this afternoon, he covers it over with flax-chaff, and even 

 with a cloth, or his working dress, to keep off any damps 

 or dews. 



In France, the mail and the braque, both tools for the 

 general service of the scutchers, are the property of the 

 master flaxman ; the other implements, to be immediately 

 described, belong to the several workmen. We purposely 

 give the French names of these tools, in order to aid the 

 reader who may wish to procure patterns or models from 

 the continent. Both the "breaking" and the previous 

 operation, the "malleting" of flax, have been compared 

 to modes of purposely imperfect mastication. The mail 

 is something like a heavy hearth-brush without any hairs 

 and with a curved handle ; but the lump of wood from 

 which the bristles would proceed, being stout and pon- 

 derous, and cut at the bottom into grinder-like ridges, 

 threatens to have an effect upon the flax similar to that 

 of an elephant's tooth upon a branch of acacia. The 

 workman, however, only beats and crushes the flax with 

 his wooden molars ; he does not quite chew it into frag- 

 ments. When the mallet has munched it sufficiently, 

 each separate handful is further crushed between the 

 powerful jaws of the braque. The combined mumbling 

 of the two breaks the woody internal stalks of the plants, 

 but leaves the fibres of the bark uninjured and entire. 



In order that our figure be perfectly intelligible, the 

 upper jaw of the "break" is raised as in the act of 

 breaking the flax. P is a stout round pole running from 

 end to end, above the three teeth T T, which are wedge- 

 shaped bars of wood four inches and three quarters deep, 

 and an inch and a half thick at the top, and thirty-three 

 inches and a half long, from their insertion in the head 

 H, to their fixing in the socket S, which moves on a 

 wooden pivot, between two solid wooden supporters. 



