RESTORATIVE, NOT AN EXHAUSTING CROP. 105 



difference to the Flax-plant whether it is choked by a valuable 

 or a worthless plant, since both would equally be weeds in 

 reference to it. Sowing Flax on clean land will save much 

 of the cost of weeding (that is after a green crop) as turnips 

 and potatoes, the cleansing of which will have rendered the 

 soil comparatively clean for Flax. If Flax be thus cultivated 

 in lieu of a corn crop, its culture may be practised without 

 much deterioration to the land ; but if it be determined to 

 regard Flax as a green crop and cause a corn crop to follow it, 

 the land will in time assuredly feel the scourging effects of 

 such a system, and oblige its cultivators to abandon it alto- 

 gether. It should never be lost sight of, in considering this 

 question, that to raise Flax must bring it into competition 

 with white crops and not green crops, because to raise it as a 

 green crop would be to deteriorate its quality, by bringing it 

 into immediate contact with manure, and if it be raised 

 without manure as a fallow crop, it must materially deteriorate 

 the soil ; no species of crop being more scourging to the soil 

 than Flax, not even a crop of turnip-seed. In the harvesting 

 of a Flax crop we are placed in this dilemma — that either the 

 quality of the Flax or the seed must be sacrificed. The seed 

 separately will not pay the expense of culture. Seed is 

 produced from six to twelve bushels per acre ; taking the 

 highest at twelve bushels, that is one-and-a-half quarter, and 

 taking it also for granted that it will be fit for sowing and 

 worth £3 per quarter (the highest price given in 1844), the 

 gross return would only be £4 10s. per acre. The Flax crop 

 varies in weight ; of rough dried fibre (according to season and 

 soil), from three to ten cwt. per acre ; and taking the high 

 produce, five cwt. per acre of dressed Flax at the highest price 

 in 1844, of ;£6 per ton, the yield will be £31, from which 

 have to be deducted the expenses of beetling, scutching, and 

 heckling, and waste and loss of straw for manure, when the profit 

 will not exceed £8jper acre ; but though such a profit would 



