PREFACE. 



IF the author be asked, as the question will doubtless 

 be put by many of his readers, his object in spending, 

 from the year 1845 up to the present year 1864, so 

 much time and labour in advocating the cultivation of Flax 

 by British farmers, his answer must be, certainly, not the 

 profit of publication, but as 198 copies must be forwarded 

 to the Right Honourable Sir C. Wood, Secretary of State for 

 India, for gratuitous distribution in that empire, with a view 

 to promoting the cultivation and preparation of Flax and 

 hemp and the many fibres which are to be found in the great 

 empire of India ; a profit under such circumstances has not 

 been to him the thought of a moment, and as it is no more 

 than a guide to the more important object he has in view, 

 namely, the introduction of his patent portable machines for 

 crimping or breaking, scutching, combing, scraping and 

 brushing Flax, hemp, rheea fibre, pine-apple fibre, New 

 Zealand Flax, &c., the work will be published at a price only 

 barely sufficient to pay its own expenses. 



The author has been twenty-nine years in connection with 

 almost every department of the Flax trade, and for the last 

 ten years in particular, engaged in inventing and manu- 

 facturing machinery for the preparation of Flax and hemp, 

 and similar fibrous plants; and being made aware, from 

 a personal acquaintance with the late lamented Dr. Forbes 

 Koyle, of the East India Company, that India abounds with 

 fibrous plants, sufficient to produce, if looked up and prepared, 

 more than double what we are obliged to import for our 

 spinning factories; the author's sole attention has been 

 directed to the supplying of such machines as must eventually 



