THE CULTURE AND USE OF TEASELS. 137 
of the process ; but a piece of fine cloth generally breaks this number 
before it is finished. There is a consumption answering to the proposed 
fineness, prices of the best kinds requiring 150 to 200 runnings up. 
It is worth while for farmers to> consider whether teasels as a crop 
are not worthy of more attention. We have seen it stated that a fair 
average crop is 200,000 burrs per acre, and a fair average price is 1^ dols. 
a thousand. Their cultivation is not a new thing in the States, though 
but little attended to. Nor is it difficult. A Mr. Wills, of East 
Windsor, Connecticut, grew them many years and found them pro- 
fitable. The most suitable soil is a rich, clayey loam, of rather a moist 
nature, such as would produce two tons of hay per acre. The time of 
planting is when the ground is in good order, about the 1st of June. 
In about two weeks the rows can be seen, when a hand or horse hoe 
must be put to work. At the second homing the plants may be thinned 
out, leaving them four or five inches apart. 
The after culture is to keep the ground absolutely clean till about 
the middle of November, when the plants are covered with straw, held 
in place by earth, to remain till the 1st of May, or till freezing might have 
past, when the plants are uncovered and the weeds kept down till the 
plants grow, as they soon do, to cover the ground closely. Soon after 
the flowers drop the burrs must be cut with stems about four inches 
long, and carried to the drying-house, where they are spread upon 
open work shelves of poles or small rails, in tiers one above another, so 
as to give a free circulation of air. They may be placed a foot thick 
upon shelves of this sort. A good hand can cut 15,000 or 20,000 a day, 
but the harvest should commence by the time half the flowers in a field 
are off. The top burrs drop their flowers first ; these are called 
" kings," but are not quite so good as the burrs next below, which are 
called " queens." A stalk has from four to six No. 1 teasles, and twenty 
to thirty, and sometimes fifty which are merchantable. The most 
common method of disposing of the teasel stalks is by mowing, drying, 
and burning on the ground. Two crops in succession generally do well, 
but more than that is not recommended. 
The growing of fuller's thistles in Austria, was commenced as far 
back as 1827, and furnishes a yearly produce of about forty to sixty 
millions of teasels, representing a value of about 100,000 florins, and 
the gross profit is 200 to 300 florins per yoke of land. In commerce, 
these teasels, which rival the Styrian and Bavarian in quality, are packed 
in boxes, and sell at one to three florins the thousand. The heads of 
the wild plants are less strong and serviceable than those of the culti- 
vated plant. The fuller's thistle is indigenous in France as in England, 
and the bees find an abundant harvest in the fields where they are 
grown ; as each head contains more than six hundred flowers, there are 
necessarily millions of flowers on an acre of land. 
In France, the culture is carried on around Louviers, Elbeuf, Sedan, 
Carcassone, and other seats of the woollen manufacture, and the teasel 
