The Cultivation of Flax in Tasmania. 65 
were designed and constructed on the farm, and any mode- 
rately-skilled carpenter and blacksmith could make them. 
They are simple, and easily kept in order, and are worked by 
attaching them by means of a strap or belt to the works of a 
small horse-power thrashing machine. When not in use 
they are removed ; and, being portable, they would travel, 
if required, as thrashing machines do. I purpose making 
models of them, which, together with samples of Flax, &c., 
Capt. Dixon will forward to the Industrial Exhibition of 
the School of Arts, Hobart Town. 
T have mentioned the different processes first adopted here 
(all recommended in various works), and also the practice gene- 
rally pursued in Ireland, as well as those at present followed 
here, to explain why the culture has been unprofitable up to last 
season. As now carried out ;—by thrashing the seed on 
portable floors in the field, using properly constructed 
ponds,—breaking and scutching by machinery, whereby 
manual labour is reduced to a twentieth part of what it pre- 
viously amounted to, (two men having been able to break and 
scutch by hand at most 6 Ibs. per day), it is a remunerative 
crop; and Capt. Dixon has decided to continue its culture, 
and to sow this year a greater breadth of land than hereto- 
fore—all the seed we have, indeed. 
Accurate daily accounts have been kept of the cost of 
each operation—pulling, taking seed off, steeping, grassing, 
and carting ; and labour has been reckoned at an average 
of £12 perannum, with £9 per annum for rations, &c., 
being 1s. 2d. per day for each man employed. On the 
crop of 20 acres grown here last season, the number of 
men employed was equivalent to 80 days at pulling, 62 
days at taking seed off, 44 days at steeping and grassing, 
and to 85 days at taking off grass and carting to barn; 2 
horses 2s. 6d. per day each, and three men Is. 2d. each, at’ 
breaking. Scutching is paid by the cwt.: two men get per 
ry 
