

THE GENESEE FAKMEK, 



FLAX-CULTURE, AND FLAX-COTTON. 



Mr. R. T. Brown, of Crawfordsville, in a communication to Gov. Wright, President 

 of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture, says : 



I send you enclosed a few samples of flax cotton, presented to me by the Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, 

 of Lafayette. 



Mr. Ellsworth has secured the machinery necessary for the mawifacture of cotton, and will hare 

 .it in operation early in the season. He has on hand the "stem" grown on 120 acres last season 

 whieh, from e^eriments already made, will, he supposes, yield about 300 pounds per acre of cotton^ 

 similar to No. 2 of the enclosed specimens. The expense of reducing the fibre to this state, after 

 the stem is produced, is about two cents per pound, which, at the usual price for cotton (10c), will 

 leave eight cents per pound, or $24 per acre for the farmer who produces it. To this must be 

 added the value of the seed, which will range from $6 to $8 per acre — giving a final result of $20 

 at least for each acre. This is Mr. Ellsworth's calculation ; it may be too high : but if we allow 

 for the magnifying effect of his zeal one-third, or even one-half, still flax would be as profitable a 

 crop, in proportion to the amount of labor required to produce it, as any of the staples in the 

 country. 



We sincerely hope that the patriotic efforts of Mr. Ellsworth and others to render 

 the culture and manufacture of flax more remunerative may prove successful ; and to 

 aid them in their contemplated improvements, we have had engraved, drawings of the 

 apparatus recommended by Prof. Wilson in his recent lecture at Saratoo-a before the 

 New York State Agricultural Society for steeping flax by the latest improved process, 

 and also of the cells and fibrous tissues of the plant. This learned and interesting 

 discourse has been neatly printed in large type by C. M. Saxton, agricultural book 

 publisher, of New York, in a pamphlet form ; and to any one at all interested in flax- 

 culture, it is well worth the twenty-five cents charged for it. 



While we wish all possible success to this new agricultural enterprise, and will aid it 

 in any way that we reasonably can, it is due to candor to say that the idea of trans- 

 forming the vascular tissue of flax into a substance having the properties peculiar, as we 

 believe, to the cellular tissue of cotton, is Utopian and impracticable. It may not, how- 

 ever, be necessarj^ to effect any such transformation to produce an article from the bark 

 of flax that may be carded like cotton and spun by similar machinery. It is the hand- 

 labor required in the old processes for the production of fine linen fabrics that renders 

 them so expensive, and not the original cost of flax in the bundle. Of the latter many 

 thousands of tons are wasted in this country, after the seed ha-s been removed,, because 

 the lint was regarded as valueless. The quantity saved, and returned at the last United 

 States census, was 13,391,415 pounds. The quantity of seed saved was 562,810 bushels. 

 Of the lint saved, more than half was grown in the State of Kentucky (a curious fact), 

 her crop being 7,793,123 pounds, yirginia is the next largest producer of flax, and 

 New York the next. Ohio farmers produce nearly fifty per cent, more flax seed than 

 those of Kentucky — raising the crop mainly for the seed lione. They saved only 

 446,937 pounds lint in 1850 — about the sixteenth part ol the lint manufactured in 

 Kentucky. 



The structural arrangement of the stem of the flax plants as shown in the engraving, 

 is copied from Dr. Schacht's Treatise, entitled Physiologische JBotanik, Die Pflanzen- 

 zelle, (Berlin, 1852.) To separate the corticle filaments of the plant from the woody 

 part, two agents, the one mechanical and the other chemical, have been employed. 

 The old flax-brake and other appliances for dressing lint are well known to most of our 

 readers. With these laborious mechanical processes, chemistry had nothing to do ; and 

 yet, the retting or " rottting" of flax, as it is more commonly called in this country, 

 effects changes in the bark of the plant which are strictly chemical in their nature. A 

 scientific knowledge of these changes forms the basis of all recent improvements in the 

 preparations of lint for carding, spinning, and weaving, or spinning without carding. 

 The minute filaments, or vascular tissues that constitute the bark of flax, are glued 



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