No. 149.] 423 



seed and four hundred pounds weight ot fiax. I sowed three 

 pecks an acre (of good seed.) My flax usually grew about three 

 feet high. I soon found that our oil was adulterated, for I have 

 sold my oil to dealers who sold it ten cents a gallon less than 

 they gave me. The market for it is quite fluctuating. We all 

 know the value of the oil-cake for cattle-feed. As we could not 

 here compete with adulteration, and at the same time with the 

 flax of the West, our business has gone down. 



Mr. Pell. — It is well known that flax requires the eleven in- 

 gredients which are necessary to grow good wheat — less in the 

 proportions of some of them. But flax does no injury to the soil 

 if it is cropped before going to seed. In the seven years interval 

 mentioned by Mr. Blakeslee, the ingredients are restored to the 

 soil. The grain crops occupy the land eleven months ; the flax 

 only six months. 



Mr. Blakeslee. — Spread flax over a piece of ground to be dew- 

 rotted, and that ground will not grow flax for seven years. 



Mr. Pell. — Plants throw off" excrementitious matter, which is 

 good for different plants, but bad for their own species. Trees, 

 as the pines, will hardly succeed each other. 



Mr. barter. — Flax dew-rotted is more easily dressed than by 

 water-rotting ; but the wjoper and lower stalks differ in quality, 

 which is not the case in water-rotted flax. 



Mr. Fleet asked Mr. Scott what was his opinion as to flax in- 

 juring soil ; for some persons have gone so far as to say that it 

 ameliorates it ! 



Mr. Scott. — I think that flax is exhausting, and not only for 

 its own growth but also for the growth of other plants. 



Judge Van Wyck observed that it was universally so consider- 

 ed when the flax went to seed, but not otherwise. Our farmers 

 pursued the same mode of cultivation of it sixty or seventy years 

 ago that we do now. I have known sixteen to twenty bushels 

 of seed to come from one acre, and the seed sowed was something 

 less than a bushel. In Europe they have some better methods 

 in managing flax than we have I entirely approve the views of 



