APPENDIX. 



The greatest difficulty in the endeavour to induce farmers 

 to grow Flax, is to disabuse their minds of the idea so 

 mischievously promoted that this plant is necessarily so great 

 an exhauster of the soil over all other crops, that it should 

 not be cultivated, or if so, it should be sparingly ; and the 

 misfortune is that editors or paid writers of the press are 

 generally of the briefless barrister class, scholars no doubt, 

 but to earn a living, will take upon themselves to write an 

 article on any subject, and I have had above thirty years 

 practical knowledge in the cultivation of Flax and have never 

 allowed a book written on this subject to remain unread that 

 I could place my hand on, or an article in the newspaper 

 that I could pass without reading, I must here say 

 that in all my experience I have never read anything so 

 monstrously absurd, and without any foundation, in fact, 

 as the article now before me, taken from a leading journal, the 

 London Standard, a paper that one would suppose should, 

 and in fact always did appear to be until this article appeared, 

 the true friend to the Irish landlord. Having noticed the article 

 at page 161 in this work, where the writer says, ' ' The 

 prosperity of the north of Ireland may be very justly attributed 

 to the flourishing condition of its linen trade, 1 ' and having also 

 shown by his assertion, "That the linen trade of Ulster 

 cannot be largely increased because the produce of its looms 

 is only suitable to the wealthy,'* that he is so perfectly ignorant 

 of the subject he has attempted to write on, that he has 

 subjected himself to be laughed at by every Flax -grower, 

 spinner, and manufacturer of linens in Ireland, I left his 

 remarks on the exhausting nature of the Flax plant, to be 

 answered by what science teaches along with practical 

 working of the soil, all of which has been tested by the 

 most able writer of the day, Sir Robert Kane, to whose works 

 I shall draw on, as I have done largely, because it is the 

 standard work on the resources of Ireland. 



That Flax is an exhauster of the soil (I say may be so, if 

 carelessly cultivated), cannot be disputed; and so will all crops 



