14 



DICKSON ON 



it will not grow on fresh farm-yard manure, let those who have 

 poor soil, and have not liquid manure to bring it up to a state 

 fit to grow Flax, if they wish to grow it off-hand, plough their 

 land in autumn as before advised, and early in February give 

 it a stroke of the harrow and cover with old rotten manure 

 as if for ridge Potatoes, and again plough level, say, to six 

 inches deep, turning down all the manure ; then, in April, a 

 good harrowing before sowing the seed will be sufficient. 

 This being done two months before the seed is sown, the rain, 

 combined with the moisture in the soil, will bring the manure 

 into a liquid state, so that when the roots of the Flax plants 

 overtake it they wi.U be revived and so moistened and prepared 

 by it that they will have strength and vigour to enter the 

 subsoil, whence they are certain, if it be clay, to abstract food 

 sufficient to produce a luxuriant crop. 



Great improvement has been made in the mode of cul- 

 tivating Flax, by the introduction of the Belgium system, 

 since I grew it on three Farms in my occupation ; ONE, two 

 miles on the Rich-hill Road ; another, in BpJlynahone, half a 

 mile from the city of Armagh ; and the thikd, two miles 

 from it, in the Town land of Ballymoran, on which I had 

 works for preparing Flax by breaking and scutching it. I 

 shall describe the mode employed by a neighbouring Farmer, 

 who grew every year, the best Flax for quality or quantity, I 

 ever saw scutched in my Mills. As he generally got from 

 10s. to 12s. per stone for his Flax, and his Farm being next to 

 mine, I watched his mode of cultivation with great care and 

 interest. 



He selects for his Wheat or Barley a field in which he has 

 grown Potatoes, and after growing one or other of these crops, 

 in October he ploughs dcwn the stubble very deep, and as his 

 land is rather of a light sort of mould he spade-trenches the 

 furrows very deeply, and throws up the clay subsoil on the 

 top of the ridge, in as rough a form as possible, to allow the 



