484 ' [Assembly 



to ninety degiees, Fahrenheit, is done in three or four days. In 

 raising flax, a part of the field should be sowed thin for the seed. 

 Common Flemish and French dressed flax imported into England for 

 forty years past, brings them from four to eight hundred dollars a 

 ton. The difference of value is owing to the difference of qualities, 

 which are assorted. 



Mr. Wakeman. — Can flax and hemp be grown for a series of years 

 on the same ground, or is rotation necessary? 



Mr. Billings. — I have known hemp to grow on the same field 

 perfectly well for twenty years in succession. The hemp crop is 

 from seven hundred to nine hundred pounds an acre. I add lime to 

 land for flax crop, but not for hemp. When flax is not allowed to 

 go to seed, it does not exhaust the soil half as much. It exhausts 

 about as much as the wheat crop. Our corn and wheat in Missouri 

 certainly exhaust our soil. We have already found the necessity of 

 deep plowing and subsoiling the land. It is better and cheaper by 

 four to one, to cradle flax than to pull it by hand in the old way. 

 We do not consider the rotting and dressing flax an unhealthy bu- 

 siness. 



Dr. Underbill, of Croton Point. — It is exceedingly important to 

 establish the culture and manufacture of flax in our country. For 

 the last twenty-five years Ireland has used the water rotting process; 

 they pulled their flax before it went to seed. They have depended 

 on the United States for their seed, for the last half century. We 

 supplied almost all their flax seed for sowing. Dew-rotting is apt 

 to weaken the fibre and render it less fine. They used to put their 

 flax into still water where it rotted in from seventeen to thirty days. 

 Dew-rotting requires some three months. Some lay the flax on the 

 snow and let it remain until spring. A very bad plan. The flax is 

 liable to great damage from cattle getting among it — it is very un- 

 equally rotted and liable to become dirty — it loses its softness and 

 fineness of fibre. The operation of cradling flax is an important 

 one — you get rid of the roots of the plant which are injurious in the 

 dressing of the flax. I believe it would be profitable to raise flax, 

 cut in blossom, and water rot it on the farm, at least until Billings' 

 new plan can be found convenient to the farmer. Cotton is now 

 whitening the ocean in the form of sails; cotton is displacing linen 

 in many ways. Our country is fast being filled with people — we 

 must have profitable employment for all hands. We have climates 

 for Tea, Coffee, Grapes, Plantains, Bananas, Yams and every good 



