456 
F^ax for Paper-makivg. 
dragging or two, was drilled 8 inches apart with 1^ bushel of 
seed in the second week of April. 
The crop was weeded at a cost of about 2s. an acre, just the 
largest weeds being cut up, and nothing more was spent on it 
until harvest, which came about a week after the wheat. 
I paid IZ. per acre for pulling, tying, and stocking, at which 
price the labourers made fair wages. The crop was somewhat 
interfered with in a few spots by wild vetches and " goose- 
grass " — the worst kind of weeds you can have in flax — but 
it yielded 22 bushels of seed and 32 cwt. of straw per acre. 
£ s. d. 
Value— 22 bushels seed, 8s 8 16 0 
32 cwt. straw, 4s. 6cZ 7 4 0 
£16 0 0 
This result I considered highly satisfactory, so determined to 
grow a larger breadth the following year. I selected a field of 
21 acres (having a similar soil to and adjoining the field just 
mentioned), which had grown eight consecutive hay-crops, 
followed by April wheat. It had been sown with Italian rye- 
grass and clover in 1875, and mown twice every year. Nitrate 
of soda was applied on two occasions, but no other manure of 
any kind. The clover having died out, the field was ploughed 
in the winter of 1879, and April wheat planted in April. The 
crop was as good as could be expected — 24 bushels per acre — 
and the land, frightfully foul, was partially cleaned in the autumn, 
and thoroughly well finished in the spring, the couch being all 
burned, and the ashes thrown over the land. Seven hundred- 
weight of damaged decorticated cotton-cake per acre was then 
sown, and the flax-seed — 1| bushel — drilled in the middle of 
April. The crop was hand-hoed at a cost of 55. per acre. 
Nothing could be finer than this crop, as thick as it could stand, 
and about a yard high. Just before it was ripe, wet weather set 
in, and more than six weeks elapsed between the time we started 
pulling and the day we finished carrying; yet no shedding was 
observable, excepting where a small piece was pulled and laid 
on the ground, when, owing to continuous wet, a certain amount 
fell out or sprouted. Of course, owing to over-ripeness and 
continual washing, the straw lost considerably in weight. Not 
only was it lighter when carried from the field, but it lost much 
in threshing, a larger proportion having gone to " cavings," yet 
the result was satisfactory, viz. : — 
£ 
40 cwt. straw per acre, 4s. Qil 9 
20 bushels seed, 8s 8 
£17 
