218 AGRICULTURE OX THE RHIXE. 



Supposing the outlay for a threshing-machine, of 4-horse 

 power, to be 70^., it is reimbursed in one year in a 

 farm producing 40,000 sheaves. A farm producing only 

 5000 sheaves would not admit of sufficient saving to pay 

 the interest on the investment. 



Flax-mills are unknown in Germany for a similar jeason. 

 Every peasant grows a small portion of flax, which he can 

 heckle himself, or his servants can do it, in winter, when 

 also it is spun by the females of the family. The saving that 

 might be effected by the agency of machinery would, in 

 a country where the cultivation and treatment of flax are 

 so well understood, be an object of first-rate magnitude, 

 if the division of labour that must follow on the introduc- 

 tion of machines were not prevented by the feeling of 

 insecurity that has so long induced the people to regard 

 land as the only secure investment of their savings. A 

 machine, of simple construction, and demanding little 

 outlay, has been invented by M. Kuthe, of Lippe 

 Detmold. Its utility in heckling and scutching flax has 

 been carefully tested, and may be estimated from the 

 accompanying table. 



The improved instrument affords a gain of 50 per cent., 

 which, as in the case of the threshing-machine, is of no im- 

 portance on a single morgen, and would not even be realized 

 on so small a scale ; but on 500 morgens the saving amounts 

 to no less a sum than 1000/. This mode of arguing, 

 according to which the cultivation of crops that can be 

 aided by machinery ought to be carried on upon a certain 

 scale to admit of a large return, is not common in Ger- 

 many. The only mode of securing an independent 

 position to the mass of the people, is there supposed to 

 lie in the subdivision of the soil. To far-sighted 

 observers this subdivision is already carried on the llhine 



