THE FLAX CROP. 



WE now enter upon another section of our subject, and 

 Lave to treat upon crops cultivated for technical or other 

 special pur-poses. Although of not so direct an importance 

 to human welfare as those furnishing us with our daily 

 food, still, as a class, they assume a very high position, 

 and claim consideration on account of the very general 

 bearing they have upon the personal comforts and re- 

 quirements of all civilized nations. When we recollect 

 that fully nine-tenths of the human race are clad, either 

 partially or entirely, in fabrics made from cultivated 

 plants, of which flax and cotton are familiar examples 

 that every civilized people consumes every day in its 

 national beverages the produce of other classes of plants 

 alike entering into cultivation for this special purpose- 

 take, for instance, tea, coffee, and cocoa we must at once 

 admit that a wide field is open, and an enormous and 

 unceasing demand exists, for the produce of plants whose 

 cultivation, from the various and important wants they 

 subserve in the human economy, ranks second alone to 

 those plants from which we derive our supply of daily food. 

 In some countries, where the soils and the climate are 

 more suitable than our own, this special cultivation takes 

 the first place in their system of agriculture, and forms the 

 medium of exchange through which the inhabitants obtain 

 from other countries those necessaries and comforts they 

 cannot produce at home. In densely populated countries 

 the most important object of cultivation is, of course, the 

 production of food. This is the primary want of our nature, 



