Oil the Cultivation of Flax. 



363 



Tt becomes, therefore, a question of considerable moment, 

 whether a home-production would be advisable ; and the Rojal 

 Agricultural Society of England have declared as a subject for 

 essay, the reasons, general and particular, in favour of extending 

 the growth of flax in this country, and what are the considerations 

 adverse to this practice, the most approved methods of cultivating 

 the plant, the best mode of saving the crop and preparing the 

 flax for market, and in what way the whole or any portion of the 

 seed may be saved with the least injury to the fibre, and how the 

 seed may be most profitably applied by the farmer." 



In the consideration of this subject, I shall divide the matter 

 under three heads ; first, the demand existing for flax, as the 

 raw material of the linen manufacture ; second, the mode of 

 culture and preparation of the plant for this manufacture, and the 

 economy of the seed ; and, thirdly, the principal reasons fa- 

 vourable or adverse to its general cultivation in the British 

 Islands. 



The plant Flax belongs to the class Pentandria Pentagvnia ; 

 nat. ord., Griunales ; genus, Linum. With but one species of 

 this genus we have to do — Linum Usitatissimum, thus botanically 

 described : — Calyx-leaves egg-shaped, acute, three-ribbed ; petals 

 crenate ; leaves lance-shaped, alternate ; stem commonly solitary, 

 erect ; stem nearly two feet high, straight, round, corymbose at 

 the top; flowers erect, with blue-veined petals.* 



It is indigenous to several countries in the East, and is gene- 

 rally supposed to have come originally from the alluvial soils of 

 Egypt formed by the overflowings of the Nile. 



From the most remote antiquity its fibre has been manufac- 

 tured into textile fabrics. Several incidental notices in the 

 Scriptures give evidence that it was grown, spun, and woven by 

 the Jews, while Egyptian mummies, embalmed nearly 1200 

 years B.C., have been found wrapped in swathing-cloths of fine 

 linen. But to follow such traces of the antiquity of this branch 

 of culture, however interesting, w^ould be inappropriate to the 

 present essay ; suffice it to say, that, originally a native of the 

 warmer regions of the globe, when introduced in the countries of 

 the temperate zone, the quality of the plant for the finer articles 

 manufactured from its fibre was considerably improved. At the 

 present day it is grown, to a greater or less extent, in all the 

 countries of the north of Europe ; in Sicily, Italy, and the coasts 

 of the Mediterranean; to a considerable extent in the peninsula 

 of India ; and latterly it has very much increased in Egypt.-f- 



* Engl. Bot., vol. xix. pi. 1357; Engl. Fl, vol. ii. p. 118. 



t The Azores produce a good quality of flax. It has also been tried 

 with some success in New Zealand ; and in the high lands of Brazil and 

 Mexico to a small extent. 



