No. 149.] 435 - 



But so many favorable conditions are required to be obtained, 

 and so many unfavorable ones to be avoided, in the selection of 

 the site for the pool, and the supply of the water required, that 

 it is probable that a desirable or perfect steep-pool could not be 

 formed in any part of the country. The soil forming the bottom 

 and sides of the pit will have an influence on the color of the 

 fibre ; clay, gravel, alluvial and peaty soil, will each impart some 

 peculiar dye to the material, which more or less affect its value. 

 The water used in the pit or pool must not be spring water, and 

 it must not have flowed over any soil containing metallic 

 deposits ; and rain water is not well calculated lor the purpose. 

 But, in addition to all these difficulties attendant upon obtaining 

 the requisite means, the grower of flax has to contend against all 

 the uncertainties and risks of either over or under-steeping his 

 flax. " One sultry night," says one of the reports of the Royal 

 Flax Society, " while it is in the steep, and nearly rotted sufficient- 

 ly, is enough to carry the fermentation beyond the safe point. 

 So much is this feared by farmers, that almost all flax is under- 

 watered ; and although much of it is afterwards mannered on the 

 grass, yet the greater proportion is brought to market with the 

 shores still unseparated in bits on the fibres " But while the 

 sultry nights of summer are unfavorable to the steeping of flax, 

 and inconvenient to the farmer, inasmuch as his laborers are at 

 that season generally otherwise employed, it is also obvious that 

 during the winter, when comparatively little farm labor is carried 

 on, the process of steeping must be discontinued altogether, in 

 •consequence of the temperature. 



ScHENCK System. — A fourth process has, within the last few 

 years, been very strenuously advocated by the Royal Flax Soci- 

 ety in Ireland, which consists in steeping the flax in hot water. 

 This mode, although doubtless an improvement upon any of the 

 existing plans, still does not afford the means of obtaining that 

 complete separation of the fibre which it is desirable to obtain. 

 The Belfast Society do not pretend that is a mode generally ap- 

 plicable to the use of the producer of flax, for under what they 

 term a " division of labor" they propose that the whole process 

 of preparation, with the profits attendant upon it, and the addi- 

 tional labor required, shall be taken out of the hands of the 



