26 



DICKSON ON 



being spread out thinly, leaving doors and windows sufficiently 

 open to admit a thorough draught, and by this mode, with 

 constant turning, say three or four times each day, the 

 moisture would soon be got rid of as would admit of the bolls 

 being brought into small heaps on a barn floor, when additional 

 means may be resorted to towards promoting their more 

 perfect drying, for example, as the husks with the seed are, 

 when bruised or ground down with oats, beans, peas, or I 

 should say, Indian corn, equally good food for cattle feeding, 

 it would be of no injury to the bolls, but on the contrary, and 

 greatly towards extracting the damp from them. If a quantity 

 of wheat, barley, or oat-straw, cut in quarter inch lengths, 

 were mixed with the bolls on the barn floor, as the dry straw 

 would help to extract the juice or damp from them, and keep 

 them open and separated, it would prevent their heating, and 

 if the grower had in his "graineries any field Beans, Peas, or 

 Vetches, it would also be an assistant to the drying of the 

 bolls to mix all together, for as all will be found, if bruised or 

 ground down together, and steeped in cold water, the finest 

 compound that can be given to cattle. This method, or 

 some such method of drying the seed bolls, would be found 

 preferable to having them parched and shrivelled and left half 

 useless from the oil being kiln dried out of the bolls and seed. 



Having finished my observations on the cultivation and 

 gathering (in the harvest) of the Flax and seed, it now 

 remains for me to show the way in which the straw or stalks 

 should be treated for our textile fabric ; and as I have some 

 late discovery and inventions to bring before the public, I 

 consider it better to first follow out the instruction of retting 

 or watering, and grassing, as practised in the North of Ireland 

 and on the continent, where, to gain information, I have 

 travelled for years, so that persons who are prejudiced in 

 favour of the general method of preparing the fibre by 

 decomposition in tanks of water, may be instructed in the best 



