166 



ON HEMP. 



feet ; and that, moreover, some plants obtain a hardness by drying, 

 that no soaking afterwards will correct : and be it remembered, as 

 before stated, that the Hemp thus steeped has always been found to 

 give more long Hemp, or of the first sort, after heckling, than that 

 they got from the Riga, and that the ropes also made with their own 

 Hemp last longer. 



How the custom of drying before steeping obtained, Mr. Frush- 

 ard remarks, doth not appear. He conceives it to have originated 

 in the paltry economy of saving the seed, which, after all, is found 

 only to be fit for the feeding of poultry, and not proper for sowing, 

 as has been proved by M. de Chateauvieux, who from forty chosen 

 plants, taken from a plantation devoted to Hemp, obtained no more 

 than a pound and a half of indifferent seed, whilst a single plant, 

 which grew by itself, yielded seven pounds and a half of the very 

 best. 



For the above reasons, Mr. Frushard objects to the mode of 

 previous drying. The practice of the natives, says he, is against it. 

 They are to be convinced. One of them said to him, to dry before 

 steeping was doing to undo. Another observed, he wanted to make 

 difficult what was easy. 



In a postscript to his letter, he quotes the authority of Abbe 

 Brulles, in proof, that the Hemp should be watered when green ; as 

 Hemp thus prepared is finer than when obtained from the plant after 

 its having been previously dried. It is, he adds, allowed by all, the 

 finer the fibre the greater the strength. In proof of his position, he 



produced 



