216 MANUAL AND MECHANICAL PROCESSES 
natives are in the habit of employing both in one of their 
processes for bleaching muslins, they could easily be induced 
to apply this method to the improved preparation of Flax or 
of any other fibre. 
MECHANICAL PROCESSES BY HAND. 
In the preceding account, some processes have necessarily 
been hinted at and supposed to have been performed, because 
without them Flax could not have been prepared for sale. 
But these have not yet been noticed in detail. As they 
require tools for their due performance, and these cannot be well 
understood from mere description, we annex some woodcuts, 
for the use of which the Author is indebted to his publisher, 
Mr. G. Smith. They are the same which were used in the 
pamphlet published by the Indian Flax Society, and which was 
compiled from the then best authorities. Many improved’ 
methods of preparing Flax have since then been discovered, 
and are now employed in Europe, and will, no doubt, be found 
useful in an extended state of the culture in India. But at 
present the simplest tools are the most suitable, such as those 
formerly very generally employed, and still used in many places 
in this country, and such as are required for cleaning by hand 
instead of by machinery. 
Of these we add, first, a figure of the instrument used for 
separating or rippling seed,—a process which is recommended 
to be performed by the farmer. 
The ripple has already been described at p. 158. 
The best ripples are made of half-inch square rods of iron, placed with 
the angles of iron next to the ripplers, 3-16ths of an inch asunder at the 
bottom, half an inch at the top, and 18 inches long, to allow a sufficient 
spring, and save much breaking of Flax. The points should begin to taper 
3 inches from the top. i 
But in the Courtrai system the crop is stooked and ricked 
