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Prof. H. E. Armstrong and Dr. J. V. Eyre. [Apr. 3, 



A very extended series of observations must be undertaken if the manner 

 in which variation in the amount of cyanide takes place throughout the 

 period of growth in various species is to be fully elucidated: the inquiry 

 is in progress. 



One of the authors has had the opportunity during the past summer of 

 studying the growth of flax in various districts in Europe where it is 

 systematically cultivated and has thus been able to gather much informa- 

 tion of a suggestive character. Many who have carefully studied the 

 growth of flax from a commercial standpoint freely express the belief that 

 flax is a plant which rapidly becomes adapted to new conditions of soil and 

 climate — they say it degenerates. There are instances of seed taken from a 

 blue-flowering crop giving a crop of flax bearing white flowers when raised 

 under different conditions of climate ; in this connexion it is of interest to 

 observe that when seed from uniformly blue-flowered flax, grown in the 

 Baltic Provinces, is grown in Holland, Belgium or some more southern 

 country, it always gives a crop containing numerous white-flowering plants 

 in the first year ; on the other hand, white-flowering flax is not stable in 

 the more central parts of Bussia, passing almost completely into the blue 

 form in about four seasons. 



It is often stated, on good authority, that the characteristics of good 

 fibre-flax become lost to some considerable degree when the plant is 

 repeatedly grown in Holland or Belgium ; a healthy crop of tall, straight- 

 stemmed flax becoming less tall, coarser in stem and generally inferior, 

 besides being less able to resist disease after growing during four or five years 

 in succession. Again, in South Bussia, a form of flax is grown, known as 

 " Steppe-seed " flax, which exhibits a greater tendency to branch and to 

 carry seed and does not attain the height of the flax grown in the North for 

 the production of fibre. When " Steppe-seed " is taken north and grown in 

 the cooler and moist regions, the plant gradually changes its character and, 

 after four or five years' acclimatisation, the crop raised from such seed is 

 quite as tall as the usual fibre crops and the fibre it yields is equal to that 

 usually produced in the district. In view of this kind of information and 

 the somewhat obscure relationship between the various forms, it will be of 

 interest to compare carefully the different varieties of Linum usitatissimum- 

 from various points of view. 



It is thought in the Baltic provinces that the fibre is spoilt if the seed be 



and L. gallicum (?) ; no trace of hydrogen cyanide has been detected either in the young 

 or in the mature foliage. It is possible that small quantities of linamarin and its 

 "co-enzyme" are present at some very early stage but if so the period must be of 

 short duration. 



