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the grant of £1,000 annually from the public funds for the 
promotion of true knowledge of flax, the circulation of 
6,000 copies yearly of instructions for saving seed, the 
analyses that have been made, the suggestions and reports, 
the efforts of seventeen paid travelling instructors, and the 
teaching of the professors in the college and schools. One 
society states that it believes it has been the means of saving 
seed to the amount of £300,000 sterling since it began. 
The flax plant, when gathered, about July or August, is 
pulled up by the roots, and may either be stacked when 
dried, in small bundles, or the plant stems may be thrown 
into pits, or pools of water. This is the usual practice. 
Here the plant lies for two or three weeks, until fermentative 
and putrefactive changes take place that enable the fibres in 
the stem to be readily separated one from the other, and 
also from the wooden centre of the plant All over the 
world the plan seems to be nearly the same : select quiet 
water, throw the plants into pits or pools, ditches, or rivers ; 
allow them to remain there until decay has separated the 
gums and tissues that bound the different parts strongly 
together, 'practically testing the stage of the progress by 
snapping the woody stem, and separating readily with the 
fingers the fibres that run on the outside, from one end of 
the plant to the other. 
The flax plant has a slender stem, and the height varies 
with the character of the seed and climate, and may be 
said to be from eighteen to thirty inches, and some 
specimens much taller. When a flax plant is examined, 
we can readily distinguish by breaking — 1st, the wooden 
cylinder, that is, the bulk of the stem, and upon it, and 
2nd, around it are the fibres ; these are cemented together by 
a peculiar matter, a sort of gum, which, being thoroughly 
incorporated in every portion of the fibre, binds also each 
fibre together, and thus makes a cylinder of separate pure 
