CULTURE IN RUSSIA—-DIRECTIONS FOR CULTURE. 155 
In Russia the Flax is cultivated with less care, and without 
any manure in the Ukraine. The time of sowing is from the 
25th of May to the 10th of June, and that of reaping, from the 
end of August to the end of September. The Flax is about 
four months in a state of vegetation. 
The directions for culture which, however, are most desirable 
for us to notice, are those which have been drawn up with so 
much care for the guidance of cultivators in Ireland. We, 
therefore, reprint, in full, the— 
DIRECTIONS FOR THE PROPER MANAGEMENT OF THE FLAX CROP, 
COMPILED BY THE COMMITTEE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOR 
THE PROMOTION AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE GROWTH OF 
FLAX IN IRELAND, 
The following directions have been carefully arranged from the mass 
of information obtained by the Society and their agriculturists, during their 
ten years’ experience in the improved system of management : 
Soil and Rotation.—By attention and careful cultivation, good Flax may 
be grown on various soils; but some are much better adapted for it than 
others. ‘The best is a sound, dry, deep loam, with a clay subsoil. It is very 
desirable that the land should be properly drained and subsoiled ; as, when 
it is saturated with either underground or surface water, good Flax cannot 
be expected. 
Without method there cannot be success. Different soils require a 
difference of rotation. In the best soils of Flanders, Flax is grown in the 
third year of a seven-course rotation, or the fifth year of a ten-course 
rotation. 
It is not considered generally advisable to grow Flax more frequently 
than once in ten years; not because it exhausts the land more than any 
other crops, but because good Flax cannot be had, at short intervals, on 
the same soil. In Belgium it invariably follows a corn crop—generally 
oats; and in this country, where oats is such a usual crop, the same system 
might be profitably pursued: but it must be understood, that it is only 
after oats following a green crop or old lea, and never after two or three 
succeeding crops of oats—which bad practice still prevails in some districts. 
It is a very general error among farmers, to consider it necessary that Flax 
! The following rotation, which would bring Flax once in ten years, has been pro- 
posed :—First year, potatoes; second, barley, laid down with grasses; third year, 
cut for soiling; fourth year, pasture; fifth year, flax; or the one half might be better 
in flax, the other in oats, so that, with the return of the rotation, which would he in 
five years, the flax could be put on the ground which, in the last rotatory course, 
was under corn, throwing a range of ten years between the flax crops coming into 
the same ground. 
A gentleman of much practical knowledge recommends the following as being 
the most profitable :—1. Oats after the grass and clover. 2. Flax pulled in August ; 
then ploughed and harrowed in with two cwt. guano and two cwt. gypsum; then 
sown with rape. 3. Potatoes or turnigs, well manured. 4. Wheat, sown in spring, 
with clover and ryegrass. 5. Hay and clover. 6. Grazing. 7. Oats. 8. Flax and 
winter vetches; guano, as before mentioned. 9. Turnips, well manured. 10, Bar- 
ley, sown with ryegrass and clover. 11. Cloverand hay. 12. Grazing. 13. Oats. 
should follow a potato crop. Except on very poor soils, a better crop will 
