PLANTS AND THEIR CULTURE. Ill 



siderations suggested above. If seed be. the princi- 

 pal end of the crop, your harvesting ought not to 

 begin till this is completely ripe ; whereas, if the 

 fibre be your main object, pull the flax two or three 

 weeks earlier. Flax thus prematurely pulled is 

 called white flax, and makes the finest thread. The 

 exhausting quality of this plant is generally admit- 

 ted, and has been long known. Pliny says of it, 

 that it burns and degrades the soil in return for the 

 nourishment it receives from it.* 



Of Hemp. 



The cultivation of this plant need not be attempt- 

 ed on soils which are not naturally or artificially 

 very rich. They who possess the former will of- 

 ten find the culture of hemp useful in reducing the 

 staple of the soil to that medium quality which is 

 best fitted for the production of grain. In some 

 parts of our own country hemp has been cultivated 

 many years in succession, before this effect was 

 produced ; and in Italy, in the neighbourhood of 

 Bologna, after centuries of cultivation, the rotation 

 continues to be wheat and hemp alternately, and 

 without fallows. So also in the environs of Ter- 

 monde, near Brussels, the usual rotation is hemp, 

 flax, and wheat.\ It is, perhaps, to tffose favoured 

 soils we ought to look for the best mode of culti- 

 vating this very useful and profitable plant. " Du- 

 ring the first year," says M. Simmonde, in his Pic- 

 ture of Tuscan Agriculture, " the field intended for 

 hemp is laid flat by the small Tuscan plough in the 

 months of August and September. This is follow- 

 ed by the great plough, which reinstates the four- 

 feet furrows, and throws up the intermediate earth 

 into ridges. The manure is applied to these in the 

 spring; after which the hemp-seed is sown and 



* " Ut sentiamus, nolente id ferre natura, urit agrum deteri 

 oremque etiarn terrain facit." Nat. Hist., 1. xix. 



t Francis de Neauchateau's State of Husbandry in the sena 

 toriat of Brussels. 



