548 
Cultivation of Flax. 
cultivation of flax will be speedily adopted, If it be adopted at all 
by the great majority of our English farmers, without other efforts 
being made to promote it. 
The cultivation of flax, although it holds out a prospect of con- 
siderable advantage to the farmer, and that neither doubtful nor 
very distant, is yet, like most things which are new, beset with 
certain difficulties at the outset. The preparation of the land 
and the sowing of the seed are not, however, of the number, for 
these are simple enough ; but the gathering and management of 
the flax after it has grown to maturity, the steeping, drying, 
scutching, hackling, and preparing it for the market, all require 
some training and some skill in the persons who carry through 
these several operations; and the great difficulty will lie in ob- 
taining the requisite degree of practical knowledge on these mat- 
ters at first. Once established, the whole will be plain and easy ; 
but it may at the outset be not unfrequently necessary to piocure 
the assistance of persons from a distance, to give the needful 
instructions ; and this would entail an expense which tenant- 
farmers would often not be disposed to encounter. In such cases 
it will be for the landlords to take the initiative, and to institute 
inquiries and make the requisite preliminary arrangements; and 
if landlords will do this, their tenants will readily follow and co- 
operate. 
The advantages resulting from flax-cultivation are daily becom- 
ing more highly appreciated in Ireland, where the quantity grown 
has more than doubled within the last few years ; and it is every 
year increasing, under the auspices of a Society instituted expressly 
lor the purpose of encouraging its growth. In Holland and in 
Belgium, and in some of the Prussian states, flax is also exten- 
sively cultivated, there being hardly a farm, however small, on 
which flax is not grown, and it is held to be the most profitable 
of all their CR)ps. 
In addition to the profit which in a pecuniary sense would 
arise from the cultivation of flax in this country, another very im- 
portant advantage would be obtained, for it would afford a large 
amount of employment, more especially for females, in those rural 
districts where employment is at present most needed. The va- 
rious operations connected with the management of flax require 
many hands, and much of the work may be performed by females. 
If flax were generally grown, employment at once suitable and 
profitable would be found in its preparation for the female po- 
pulation of our villages and rural j)arishes, without resorting to 
common field-labour, as they are now too often compelled to 
do; and this would doubtless be a great benefit, socially and 
morally. 
Our rural population is generally found to be most abundant, and 
