PEDIGREED FIBER FLAX. . 3 
accomplished by running the straw through a number of pairs of 
fluted rollers which break into small pieces the woody shell surround- 
ing the central pith. The final process of extracting the fiber, that of 
scutching, is accomplished by holding the fiber over a notch in the 
side of a wooden stall where the pieces of pith that remain clinging 
to it are beaten oif by a revolving wheel of blunt-edged paddles. 
Fig. 1. — Comparison of selected and unselected fiber flax grown under the same conditions 
in the breeding plats in 1916. Thrashed straw of four selected strains, 35 to 37 inches 
high, is shown at the left. Note their similarity. The three samples in the center are 
unthrashed commercial Blue-Blossom Dutch fiber flax, while the two samples at the 
right are Minnesota No. 25, a semifiber type. 
Since flax fiber runs the full length of the stem, it has been the 
practice in harvesting to pull it by hand. Several inches of stubble 
are left in the field when the flax is cut with a binder or mower, and 
pulling- prevents this waste and also keeps the straw from being 
tangled. Owing to the scarcity and high cost of labor, hand pulling 
is becoming more and more out of the question. Two solutions of 
the problem are: (1) Growing a long-stemmed variety of flax which 
would not lose such a large percentage of its stems when cut or (2) 
using a machine puller. Several types of machine pullers have been 
