1921.] 



Flax-Pulling Machines. 



755 



between the speed of the advancing ground wheels and the 

 backward speed of the revolving combs. This feature is a very 

 important one as it enables the ground speed of the machine to 

 be greater than the pulling speed of the combs. The pulled 

 flax is delivered on the ground at the rear of the machine, 

 being freed from the engaging pulling combs on the underside 

 of the machine. In this case the pulled flax is left in the track 

 of the machine, in swathes which have to be tied up and 

 removed before the machine returns. 



No injury to the flax stems could be detected after pulling 

 by these machines, but it was noticed in each case, although 

 more particularly with the Fibre Corporation Machine, that 

 the flax heads were very much tangled, a fact which must 

 render " rippling " difficult if not impossible. In both 

 cases the heads were brought evenly together so that, depend- 

 ing upon the evenness in length of the straw pulled, the root 

 ends were left at various distances in the bundle, and owing to 

 the tangled condition of the heads it was difficult to even-up 

 the root ends when making up into bundles. 



While the trials were in progress the Crawford-Bennett 

 Machine, by virtue of the elevation to which the pulled flax 

 is brought, allowed the pulled straws to be tossed about in the 

 breeze a good deal, causing a confusion of the straws in the 

 bundle of pulled flax ultimately discharged. On the other 

 hand, although not affected by wind disturbance, the Fibre 

 Corporation Machine was found to be depositing the swathes 

 of pulled straws upon flax which had not been pulled by the 

 combs, making it difficult to lift and tie up the pulled swathes. 



Generally, with the exception of the unpulled flax beneath the 

 swathes of pulled flax already referred to in the case of the 

 performance of the Fibre Corporation Machine, the quantity 

 of flax left unpulled by these machines under the ideal condi- 

 tion of the trial was scarcely significant, being for the most 

 part, short stems which usually fail to survive the operations 

 culminating in scutched fibre. It is doubtful whether either 

 machine would be able to deal with any crop if ' ' laid ' ' at all. 



In the performance of these two machines there appears 

 to be a very big advance towards solving the flax pulling pro- 

 blem, and with the prospect of further improvements before 

 next season, one may reasonably hope that the machine pull- 

 ing of flax crops will be commercially possible at no distant date. 



The photographs are reproduced by kind permission of the 

 Belfast Telegraph. 



F 2 



