32 FLAX MANAGEMENT. 



to introduce, with an improved husbandry, the growth 

 and manufacture of flax. He has erected flax-mills at 

 Newport, which are now let to Mr Bernard, a Swiss 

 gentleman, who kindly explained to me every part of 

 the improved process he adopts in steeping and scutch- 

 ing. He manages the flax on the Courtrais or Belgian 

 system, steeping it in warm water, heated to 90 de- 

 grees by steam-pipes passing through the steeping vats. 

 In this way the process occupies only sixty hours, which, 

 by the old method, took two or three weeks. After 

 being steeped, the flax is dried in the open air if the 

 weather suits, or in drying sheds, which are cheaply 

 constructed. It is then sorted and taken to the scutch- 

 ing-mill. The whole of the finer portion of the flax is 

 sent to Belfast, where it is sold to the spinners ; the 

 refuse, or tow, is woven into sacking, and made into 

 bags, as, from its low value, it would not pay carriage 

 to send it far in the bulky unmanufactured state. 

 This factory gives employment to about three hundred 

 people in Newport throughout the year, and works up 

 the produce of several hundred acres, yielding to the 

 farmer, under the present imperfect cultivation, from £6 

 to £9 an acre. The seed, which is separated from the 

 flax before it is steeped, is reckoned to be about one- 

 fourth the value of the crop. The steeping process 

 adopted here greatly simplifies the management to the 

 farmer, as in this way he grows and pulls the flax, and 

 then stooks and stacks it like a corn crop, selling it to 

 the manufacturer when it best suits either party, and 

 without having any intricate process to attend to. The 

 machinery seemed simple, and requires neither large 



