372 EXPORTATION OF LINSEED. 



the less would be the quantity of linseed brought to 

 market. 



It is one of those advances which the arts owe to 

 scientific research, and deserves the consideration of 

 those who affect to despise, or altogether deny, the use of 

 science to agriculture, that the new method (Schenck's) 

 of steeping flax in hot water promises to render all these 

 precautions unnecessary, to extract as fine a fibre from the 

 rank coarse ripe flax-plant, as from the slender unripe 

 plant hitherto privileged alone to yield the finer thread. 

 This method of steeping is certain and constant in its 

 results, and is performed in as few days as the old 

 method required of weeks. 



The general introduction of this method of manu- 

 facturing the plant will simplify the farmer's treatment 

 of the crop, will enable him to cultivate flax as he does 

 any other plant he grows, to reap a profit from it in 

 proportion to its total weight, and, as in other crops, to 

 ripen his seed either for home use or for exportation. It 

 may regenerate the flax -husbandry in Canada, and 

 revive, without exhausting the land, the ancient trade In 

 the seed as an article of export.* 



I have said that the average freights from the 

 Canadian ports, direct to Liverpool and other ports in 

 Great Britain, cannot be greater than the cost of 

 transmitting produce from the shores of Lake Ontario, 

 through the port of New York. This direct freight 

 ought in reality to be less ; and in a few years it will 

 almost certainly become so. This statement naturally 

 leads me to make a few remarks on the navigation of 

 the St Lawrence, its importance to Canadian interests, 

 and the influence it is destined hereafter to exercise on 

 the general revenues of the Canadas. 



* Canadian seed ought to be as good as Riga flax seed, of which 

 5000 barrels have been imported into Newry, and 15,000 into Belfast, 

 during the present season. 



