152 
CULTURE OF FLAX. 
The importance of Flax culture being admitted, we may 
devote a few words to the objections which are usually alleged 
against it. These chiefly consist of the opinions entertained 
respecting the exhausting nature of a Flax crop. This is 
certainly true, where everything is taken from the soil and 
nothing returned to it; but the elementary principles of which 
both cotton and fibre, as well as sugar, consist, are now known 
to be obtained almost entirely from the atmosphere. There- 
fore, by taking away only the cotton, the flax, or the sugar, 
and returning all the other parts of the plant to the soil, these 
products will impoverish the soil as little as it is possible for 
any culture to do. This, as far as Flax is concerned, may be 
effected by some of the improved methods of preparing the 
fibre, and by feeding cattle on the oil-cake of the seeds, and 
thus returning all the other constituents which had been taken 
from the soil. Mr. Nichols observes that “every farmer will 
be enabled, by applying the seed of his Flax crop to that pur- 
pose, to obtain a supply of the richest mauure, which, with the 
offal separated from the fibre in course of preparation, will 
serve to renovate the soil and secure its undiminished fertility.” 
This we find fully proved by the foregoing and other 
analyses of the different parts of the plant, and of the soil in 
which it has been grown, as well as of the products obtained 
in the improved steeping and preparation of the fibre. 
The analyses of Mayer and Brazier correspond closely with 
those made by Sir R. Kane, of specimens of Belgian Flax ; and 
their conclusions also coincide with his: that, while the mineral 
ingredients which we remove from our fields in Wheat, 
become constituents of food, the woody fibre of Flax is 
separated from those very mineral substances which are so 
essential for its successful growth; and they forcibly observe 
that “the inorganic substances taken up by the plant, are 
only instruments in the production of Flax, which should be 
as carefully preserved as tools in a manufactory, and will then 
do further duty in promoting the elaboration of future crops.” 
Climate.—One of the most important considerations in at- 
