PEDIGREED FIBER FLAX. 3 



accomplished by running the straw through a number of pairs of 

 fluted rollers which break into small pieces the woody shell surround- 

 ing the central pith. The final process of extracting the fiber, that of 

 scutching, is accomplished by holding the fiber over a notch in the 

 side of a wooden stall where the pieces of pith that remain clinging 

 to it are beaten off by a revolving wheel of blunt-edged paddles. 



Pig. 1. — Comparison of selected and unselected fiber flax grown under the same conditions 

 in the breeding plats in 1916. Thrashed straw of four selected strains, 35 to 37 inches 

 high, is shown at the left. Note their similarity. The three samples in the center are 

 unthrashed commercial Blue-Blossom Dutch fiber flax, while the two samples at the 

 right are Minnesota No. 25, a semifiber type. 



Since flax fiber runs the full length of the stem, it has been the 

 practice in harvesting to pull it by hand. Several inches of stubble 

 are left in the field when the flax is cut with a binder or mower, and 

 pulling prevents this waste and also keeps the straw from being 

 tangled. Owing to the scarcity and high cost of labor, hand pulling 

 is becoming more and more out of the question. Two solutions of 

 the problem are : (1) Growing a long-stemmed variety of flax which 

 would not lose such a large percentage of its stems when cut or (2) 

 using a machine puller. Several types of machine pullers have been 



