310 THE FLAX CROP. 



forming and the respiratory and heat-giving compounds 

 (see vol. i p. 2) and thus sustain the animals in good health 

 and condition. For this purpose beans, or any of the other 

 leguminous seeds (peas, lentils, vetches, &c.), are well 

 adapted. These all contain the nitrogenized compounds 

 in excess, and need some compensating fatty or oily com- 

 pounds to supplement their deficiency, and thus develope 

 their full feeding values. Besides these physiological 

 points, the money view is certainly unfavourable to the 

 consumption for feeding purposes of an article and that, 

 it must be recollected, in the proportion in which it 

 exists in linseed, of very questionable service so costly 

 as linseed oil, when by disposing of the linseed itself, for 

 the extraction of this oil, the residuum, linseed-cake, in 

 itself a more valuable substance for general consumption, 

 can be obtained, and a profit made by the transaction. 



Having now before us the chemical composition of the 

 crop, it will be well to see how far the character, so 

 generally attached to it, of being an exhausting crop, as 

 it is termed, is justified by the evidence which chemistry 

 places at our disposal. Having already discussed the 

 meaning and true agricultural value of an exhausting crop 

 (vol. i. p. 369), we will now, for our present purpose, 

 assume an average crop to yield 20 bushels of seed and 

 2 tons of straw, and we shall find that, supposing the 

 entire crop were sold off the farm, it will take away with 

 it about 250 Ibs. of mineral substances in the proportions 

 already given, or about the same, both in quantity and in 

 fertilizing value, as would be removed by an average 

 crop of wheat, barley, or beans. In flax- growing districts, 

 however, the crop is rarely sold altogether off the farm ; 

 the seed, or a great part of it, is kept for feeding pur- 

 poses, and the straw is very commonly steeped and pre- 

 pared by the grower, and the scutched fibre only sent 

 to market, and thus lost, in a manurial point of view, to 



