LIXACEiE. 185 



A mueli stouter plant than either of the preceding, with the 

 stems less wiry, 1^ to 2 feet high, solitary, or two or three from 

 the crown of the root. Leaves much larger, f to If inch long ; 

 they are also hroader and more flaccid. Flowers f to f inch across, 

 with the petals contiguous, rather dull purplish-blue. The sepals 

 resemble those of L. angustifolium, but the outer and inner are 

 moi'e nearly alike in shape, and the petals arc more distinctly 

 crenate at the ajiex. The capsule is much larger, f to ^ inch 

 across, and has a shorter mucro. The seeds are considerably 

 larger. 



In this species, as in L. angustifolium, there is no very marked 

 dimorphism in the flowers. 



I am quite luiacquainted with the var. 0, and give it only on 

 the authority of Professor Babington's " Manual." 



Common Flax. 



French, Lin Cultive, Lin Usicel. Germao, Gewolmlicher Lein. 



Of the many foreign and cultivated species of the Flax plant, not one of them 

 has greater beauty than the Flax of coniraerce, whose blossoms of turquoise blue 

 ■waving on its slender stems give so great a charm to the spring aspect of flax-growing 

 countries. As an article of manufacture and commerce it has considerable value and 

 great antiquity. Probably the very first fibre used in textile manufacture was Flax fibre 

 We find frequent mention of it in the early Hebrew Scriptures ; and when the Israelites 

 were in bondage in Egypt, it would appear to have been a common field crop. In the 

 ninth chapter of the book of Exodus, after the description of the fearful hail-storms 

 mingled with fire with which the Egyptians were visited, on account of their obstinacy 

 and disobedience, it is said: "And the flax and the barley was smitten, for the barley 

 was in the ear and the flax was boUed," or risen in the stalk. Flax as a manufactured 

 article is alluded to in Genesis : " And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and 

 put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures oijiae linen." This is, perhaps, 

 the first mention made of an article which has from that time been in constant use by 

 Eastern nations, and has extended with the progress of civilization all over the world. 

 Herodotus tells us that linen (so called from the word llin, a fibre, as also from the 

 name of the plant) was the common material for clothing among the Egyptians, and 

 that Egypt was the great emporium of the Flax trade. Solomon purchased linen yam 

 in Egypt (2 Chron. i. 16), and Pliny tells us that the Egyptians were the first to make 

 textile fabrics. The question as to the nature of the cere-cloth in which this people 

 used to envelope their dead has been satisfactorily settled by the aid of the microscope, 

 and there can now be no doubt that mummy cloth is a coarse sort of linen fabric, the 

 peculiar appearance of the Flax fibre being easily distinguished from the hairs of the 

 cotton plant or any other material. We read of a linen corselet preserved in the Temple 

 of Minerva at Lindus, in Pihodes, which had belonged to the Egyptian king Amapis 

 six hundred years before Christ, and in Pliny's time some mutilated remains of this 

 corselet were still in existence. Pliny gives us a long account of the uses of Flax 

 among the Romans, with whom, however, it was not a common article of clothing. He 

 speaks of its use in navigation in very enraptured terms, and extols the frail plant 

 which has so wonderfully enabled man to cross the ocean, and which brought " Ostia 

 within six days of Gades, near the Pillars of Hercules," a passage which reads as 



-VOL. II. 2 B 



