GROWTH OF FLAX. 371 



possibility of profitably conducting a direct traffic with 

 England in Canadian flour was proved by the fact, that, 

 while I was at Montreal, a vessel from the Ontario, 

 containing seventeen thousand bushels of the best 

 Toronto white wheat, lay opposite Goold's Mills — one of 

 those of which I have spoken as being superior to the 

 average of the Rochester and Oswego mills — to be 

 ground, on merchants' account, for the Liverpool 

 market. If properly cultivated, this trade may, I think, 

 make both the growers and grinders of Canadian wheat 

 very indifferent as to the 20 per cent duties of the 

 States. 



Among the articles of export from Lower Canada, 

 linseed is one which used formerly to occupy a not 

 unimportant place, though now, so far as I can learn, 

 the export of this grain to England has almost 

 ceased. The French Canadians used formerly to grow 

 flax extensively for home consumption 5 and most of the 

 Lower Canadian farmers still raise enough to employ 

 and clothe their own families. The diminution in the 

 growth and export of seed may be owing, in some 

 degree, to the gradual substitution of cotton for linen in 

 articles for domestic use; partly to the general exhaustion 

 of the soil, of which I have spoken ; and partly to the 

 growing taste for finer cloth, which will necessitate the 

 growth of a finer quality of flax. The first and third of 

 these causes are probably the most influential. Now, it 

 Is known to all flax-growers that hitherto a fine fibre 

 has been considered Incompatible with a strong, rank, 

 heavy crop of flax, or with the ripening of the seed. 

 Hence the taste for fine flax would cause the sowing of 

 much seed, that the plant might spring up thick — the 

 selection of poor or exhausted land that it might not 

 come up rank, or grow tall and strong — and the pulling 

 of the plant before the seed was ripe. The more these 

 practices for the improvement of the fibre were followed. 



