manure every fourth year, with complete artificials in the intervening 

 years. In the summary of the results for the first four years it 

 was shown that superphosphate, alone or in combination, was 

 essential for an increased crop on this land; this continues to be 

 the case, the effect of superphosphate on the quality of the herbage 

 being very marked. 



Experiments on the manuring of meadow hay were also con- 

 ducted on seven farms in Staffordshire. These trials have now 

 been carried on for from one to ten years, and the results for 1908 

 and the average for the series of years are given in the report. 



XXVI. 



Fibre plants. -- Sugar producing crops. Tobacco and other 

 industrial crops. Curing of some special products. 



A. D. HALL. Flax-culture in England. (In Agrictdture and the 

 Development Grant). The English Review, April 1910. Lon- 

 don, Chapman & Hall Ltd., p. 132. 



* Flax was once a standard crop in the United Kingdom, now 

 the acreage has shrunk to 26 acres in England, though 46 916 acres 

 remain in the North of Ireland. The trade has perished chiefly 

 because the farmer who grew the flax had then to submit it to 

 the " retting " process in order to extract the fibre. Both his 

 facilities and knowledge for doing this were bad, and he turned 

 out an uneven, irregular and discoloured product which was not 

 saleable at remunerative prices. But the farmer ought never in 

 these days of specialism to be called upon to conduct so delicate 

 a process as "retting" really is; his business should be to grow 

 the flax, and there is as yet no proof that the British farmer cannot 

 grow flax profitably. Let the Board of Agriculture or the New 

 Development Commissioners set some one to learn how to conduct 

 the retting process on a large scale and then start it in East 

 Anglia with flax grown by the neighbouring farmers under contract. 

 It would not take many years to demonstrate whether there was 

 enough money in the business to attract the local capitalist. " 



