38 



DICKSON ON 



feeding on the pure seed, especially when soaked by steeping 

 in cold water for twenty-four hours and prepared for cattle by 

 being mixed with cut straw, chaff, or hay, as I have known it 

 to be used by the most extensive and scientific gentlemen 

 farmers in Ulster, and by one in particular, whose cattle and 

 farm I had many opportunities of seeing as he (Mr. Edward 

 McKane) lived within one mile of my farm at Ballymoran, 

 (where I had Flax breaking and scutching mills, and where I 

 resided up to 1830), one mile from the demense of His Grace 

 the Lord Primate, within two miles of the city of Armagh ; 

 and as I have been applied to for information on the subject 

 by Mr. Thomas Duggan, a gentleman of Dublin, and have 

 referred him to Mr. McKane for practical instructions, 

 knowing him to be one of the most extensive and scientific 

 farmers in Ireland, and having also been favoured with copies 

 of the correspondence between these gentlemen, I cannot do 

 better than give the questions put by Mr. Duggan, and 

 the answers he received from Mr McKane, whose polite 

 attention has been in keeping with his comprehensive views 

 and desires to promote improvements in agriculture : — ■ 



On the subject of Flax seed for cattle feeding, I go back to 

 1850 for evidence procured by a friend in Dublin to show by 

 practice its superior merit. 



" 101, Middle Abbey Street, 



Dublin, May 8th, 1850. 



Sir, 



As I have been advising some tenants of mine, in 

 Carlo w, to grow Flax, on account of the value of the seed for 

 feeding cattle, as well as the value of the fibre, and have been 

 told by a gentleman that you, so far back as 1830, had a 

 steam apparatus for the purpose of boiling and steaming 

 linseed meal with chaff, cut straw, hay, potatoes, etc., and in 

 fact that you were the first gentleman in Ulster to find out the 

 secret and economy of grinding and steaming, or boiling 



