ITS VALUE. 79 



there can be no doubt that the sooner it is cultivated to 

 a greater extent, the sooner will the enormous amount 

 of pauperism decrease, and comfort and contentment be 

 more generally diffused among large masses of the la- 

 bouring agricultural population." 



If such happy results have been obtained by a single 

 isolated experimentalist residing in a remote district, 

 with numerous prejudices to overcome, with everything 

 to teach, and almost everything to learn himself, and 

 without the aid of the division of labour between the 

 farmer and the flaxman which we advocate, and which 

 succeeds so well on the continent, what may we not 

 anticipate by-and-by when practice, custom, and familiar 

 knowledge shall have smoothed the many difficulties 

 which now beset the flaxgrower's progress ? As the 

 means of advancing in an onward course, we will suggest 

 that it really would be a patriotic action on the part of 

 any agricultural amateur, who had a moderate amount of 

 wealth and leisure at command, to spend a few weeks in 

 the flax districts of Belgium, or the Pas de Calais, and 

 study the details as practised there. He will find no 

 attempt at secresy, nor meet with any refusal to answer 

 his inquiries. All that will be required of him will be a 

 polite course of conduct, and a competent knowledge of 

 the French language. Interpreters are but imperfect means 

 of communication, especially when technical details have 

 to be entered into. Many, however, are the cases in 

 after-life in which a man regrets that a portion at least of 

 the time devoted to Latin and G-reek had not been spared 

 to modern languages. "When the amateur linier has 

 thus prepared himself, he is recommended to try the 

 experiment at home, the following season, on so small a 

 scale that loss shall be of no consequence to him. A few 

 rods of ground will be quite sufficient space on which to 

 go through the whole process, from sowing the seed to 

 delivering the fibre ; and to make the trial more complete, 

 it will be right to divide the crop into two sowings, one 

 the first or second week in March, the other about the 

 middle of May. The comparison between early and lato 



