No. 200.] 89 



if possible. Bind up as much flax as a wisp of flax will bind in one 

 bundle. Shock it on the field so as lo prevent wet from getting into it. 

 Do not stack it. Leave it in the shocks for five or six days. When 

 the weather is favorable and it is about as dry as you would have 

 your hay or oats, then house it. 



7th. How long can I keep it before it is sent to market ? 



Fifty years ! The flax is improved by keeping it a year. The glu- 

 ten which is in it then dissolves more readily whenyoa come to rot it. 



8th. Is it worth my while to rot it on my own farm ? 



No, you cannot make so good a profit by doing it. 



9th. Is it worth my while to have a machine for dressing the crop ? 



If you can raise two hundred acres of flax, then you can afibrd to 

 rot and dress it. One hundred acres will not pay a sufficient profit. 



10th. What is an average crop of flax in the United States pei 

 acre? 



About two hundred pounds to the acre if you let it all go to seed, 

 but four hundred pounds if you gather it in the blossom. Ireland av- 

 erages five hundred and fifty pounds an acre, on one hundred thou- 

 sand acres. 



1 1th. Do you know how much it will cost to raise it per acre ? 



Twelve dollars an acre when housed. 



12th. What is the cost of dressing it ? How much can one of your 



dressing machines prepare in a dav ? 



Three cents a pound, from the stack to the bale press. One of my 

 dressing machines with seven men, will dress in one day six hundred 

 pounds of flax, and so much tow is made by it, that it saves twenty per 

 cent of the flax by my operation ; and the same process answers for 

 hemp. Flax, when rotted in water heated to ninety degrees of Fah- 

 renheit, is done in three or four days. In raising flax, a part of a field 

 should be sowed thin for the seed. Common Flemish and French 

 dressed flax, imported into England for forty years past, brings them 

 from four to eight hundred dollars a ton. This difference of value is 

 owing to the difference of qualities which are assorted. 



