CULTURE OF FLAX. 3 



Flax Markets, every week during the Flax selling season, 

 to purchase the article for the Flax Spinning firms (for which 

 I was agent) in Leeds and Preston, when very little Flax 

 could be had in the Irish markets as well prepared as that 

 which is now produced, I took particular notice of the soils, 

 and made great enquiries of the Farmers, as I drove from 

 market to market, respecting the course or rotation^ prepara- 

 tion and management, I found that in the Markethill and 

 Tanderagee district, where the soil is rather of a sandy and 

 gravelly mould, Flax of very fine quality was constantly pro- 

 duced in this quarter. They planted the Potatoes at that 

 period, principally in the ridge way, with the spade, and this 

 deepened the soil as they frequently raised up by a l( Pick 

 Axe " the clay soil in the furs to cover the plants, and 

 Potatoes thus planted are always better manured and more 

 easily kept free from weeds than they are in the Plantations 

 or drill method of Labouring, and the ground is well pulver- 

 ized by the digging, especially if the bottom of the furrows or 

 subsoil happens to be, as it is in most parts, clay, it is fre- 

 quently, as I said, hand picked and the furrows shovelled up, 

 and this clay being tossed on the top of the ridges to the 

 scorching rays of the Sun, crumbles down round the Potatoe 

 plants, and helps to bind the loose mould into a more firm 

 body, and when the Potatoes are removed by the spade, it 

 gets such a mixing with the mould, that it is to the land as a 

 new flannel vest is to the body at Christmas, for it binds and 

 renovates it, and prepares it to stand the labour, just as the 

 warm flannel prepares the body to stand the piercing blast of 

 the winter's day. Formerly, and I may say up to 1842, when 

 the Belgian system got known in Ireland, the ground so pre- 

 pared for Potatoes, was what the Farmers grew their Flax 

 crops from ; but now they grow it after the Belgian system 

 and take first a crop of Barley or Wheat after Potatoes, and 

 then Flax, and this they find much more profitable, for in the 



