No. 151.] 483 



Let the flax lie on the ground until it wilts. In fair weather it 

 may lie there thirty-six hours. Wet weather must be avoided at this 

 time, if possible. Bind up as much flax as a whisp of flax will 

 bind in one bundle. Shock it on the field so as to prevent wet from 

 getting into it. Do not stack it. Leave it in the shocks for five or 

 six days. When the weather is favorable, and it is about as dry as 

 you would have your hay or oats, then house it. 



7th. How long can I keep it before it is sent to market? 



Fifty years! The flax is improved by keeping it a year. The 

 gluten which is in it, then dissolves more readily when you come to 

 rot it. 



8th. Is it worth my while to rot it on my own farm? 



No; you cannot make so good a profit by doing it. 



9th. Is it worth my while to have a machine for dressing the crop? 



If you can raise two hundred acres of flax, then you can afford to 

 rot and dress it. One hundred acres will not pay a suflEicient profit. 



10th. W^hat is an average crop of flax in the United States per 

 acre? 



About two hundred pounds to the acre if you let it all go to seed, 

 but four hundred pounds if you gather it in the blossom. Ireland av- 

 erages five hundred and fifty pounds an acre on one hundred thou- 

 sand acres. 



11th. Do you know how much it will cost to raise it per acre? 



Twelve dollars an acre when housed. 



12th. What is the cost of dressing it? How much can one of 

 your dressing machines prepare in a day? 



Three cents a pound from the stack to the bale press. 



One of my dressing machines with seven men, will dress in one 

 day, six hundred pounds of flax, and so much less tow is made by it 

 that it saves twenty per cent of the flax by my operation. And the 

 same process answers for hemp. Flax when rotted' in water, heated 



