Turning to actual cultural practice, we are on somewhat safer ground when we 

 hear through Professor Bolley that wheat does better after flax than after wheat. Mr. 

 William Forrester, of Mitchell, Ont., a flax grower of over forty years' experience, 

 records two excellent successive crops of fibre flax on the same field. Mr. Howard 

 Fraleigh, of Forest, Ont., tells the writer that it is not uncommon for him to rent a 

 field of rich sod two years in succession. Frequently the second crop is considerably 

 better than the first. Professor Bolley reports having grown a disease-resistant type 

 of seed flax year after year for sixteen years on the same land with satisfying results. 



On close examination it is not difficult to discover why flax should be wrongly 

 stigmatized as a robber crop. Its facility in withstanding the debilitating effects of 

 excessive fertility has exposed it to the charge of exhausting that fertility. 



The objection that nothing is returned to the soil after a flax crop is of small or 

 great moment according to the proportionate area of the farm under this crop, and to 

 the nature of the allied branches of farming undertaken. Generally speaking, the 

 diversified methods in southern Canada are capable of affording a regular place for 

 flax in crop rotation without impairing the fertility of a soil. This is a matter, how- 

 ever, that depends too closely on individual conditions to admit of general conclusions 

 in the space at our disposal. 



SOIL SELECTION. 



The flax plant is not at all fastidious regarding the character of the soil, providing 

 cultural methods and weather conditions are satisfactory. In flax croppings in 

 Canada, it usually turns out that the type of soil is, of many factors, the last and 

 least taken into account. This happens, not because flax growers are indifferent to 

 the character of the soil to be employed, but because practically all the clean arable 

 areas within the flax-growing region are suitable as- to soil for this crop. It is inter- 

 esting to note that the very field an Ontario flax farmer might reject for flax, on the 

 ground of an excess of sand, is the very field that in certain moist climates, or in 

 moist seasons in Canada, would likely give a high yield of excellent flax. The explan- 

 ation of this is that a light type of soil frequently supplies for the flax plant the loose, 

 friable condition it prefers. Experiments conducted both in the state of Washing- 

 ton and in Ireland many years ago demonstrate the suitability of light soils for flax 

 in moist, equable climates. 



ANALYSIS of three kinds of Soil that were found to be highly favourable for Flax 



Culture in Ireland. 



(From "On Flax" by W. Charley.) 



