262 



rience, for the last five years, often causes me to suspect that 

 the elaborate descriptions in books were intended rather to 

 deter, than to encourage, an extended culture of this important 

 plant in England. 



The wily Dutch were certainly the first to promulgate the 

 notion that it was impossible to obtain both fibre and seed at 

 the same time; a notion which, however absurd, regulated 

 the practice of England, Scotland, and Ireland, till the year 

 1841; many asserting that the steeping of the stalks with the 

 seed, tended to improve the quality of flax, which is now 

 found to be an erroneous opinion, because flax itself con- 

 tains oleaginous matter that requires extraction instead of 

 addition. 



Moreover, the necessary ploughing and harrowing were sup- 

 posed to be monster-operations, totally beyond the abilities of 

 British farmers : but, when our Belgian instructor landed in 

 England, he was surprised at the garden-like appearance of 

 our farms ; and, on his arrival in Norfolk, exclaimed, '■ Your 

 lands are already fit for sowing !" 



Singular as it may appear, a movement, in the above-named 

 year, accidentally simultaneous, took place in the north of Ire- 

 land, and at Trimingham, in Norfolk, to break through pre- 

 judices, founded solely upon ignorance and idleness. Industry, 

 aided by the dictates of common sense, prevailed. For it is 

 recorded in the Report of the Flax Improvement Society of 

 Ireland, that from sixty to eighty thousand pounds' worth of 

 seed was saved last year, without injury to the fibre; and it is 

 calculated that, in the course of a year or two, no flax will be 

 steeped with the bolls, thus adding to the wealth of that coun- 

 try no less than 300,C00Z. yearly, according to the present ex- 

 tent of culture : while in Norfolk no flax has been grown 

 without an ample return of seed, as appears in the Report of 

 the National Flax and Agricultural Improvement Association. 



The entire management of flax, from the preparation of the 

 land for sowing, through every stage, is, I repeat, work suit- 

 able to the commonest capacities. No apprenticeship is re- 

 quired; for, by the assistance of one experienced youth of 18, 

 very many can be taught at once all the mysteries of harvest- 

 ing, grassing, and scutching the crop for market. Through 



