132 
Some Minor Farm Crops. 
autumn ploughing is always regarded as of the utmost impor- 
tance. When the soil is light it must be consolidated so that 
it will retain moisture easily and provide a firm seed-bed — a 
condition which is best attained by following with line after a 
root or green crop has been fed off by sheep. Great stress is 
laid upon the necessity of having the land deeply worked and 
firm, with but a shallow surface layer to cover the seed after 
sowing. This is of importance, because the line crop grows 
very rapidly — the growing period extending over some ten 
weeks only — and the most desirable conditions are those that 
cause this rapid growth to be both continuous and uniform ; a 
check during the development of the plant causing the fibres to 
become coarse and irregular. 
It is no longer seriously maintained that flax is an exhausting 
crop in the sense that it draws more from the land than do 
other crops. However, owing to its rapid growth the plant 
requires its nutritive materials to be in an easily assimilable 
form. This means that flax is seemingly a crop that would 
respond readily to artificial manures, but such application can 
be made profitably only after a thorough knowledge of the 
manurial requirements of the crop and of the particular soil has 
been acquired, and it is to be lamented that little or no infor- 
mation of a reliable nature concerning this is available. 
The selection of the seed for sowing is an important point, 
as it is very necessary to employ only the very best seed, 
choosing that which is bright, plump, and clean. The best plan 
is to choose one's seed merchant with care, so that one may be 
reasonably confident of getting the best quality seed on the 
market. From quite early times it has been the custom in 
England to procure seed for sowing from Riga and Pskoff direct, 
or Riga seed which has been grown for one year in Holland or 
Belgium — now known as “ Riga Child.” Such imported seed 
was formerly grown successively for some few years ; the custom 
being to mark off a portion of the crop each year and to allow 
that to mature more fully to provide seed for sowing the 
following year. The necessity for frequent change of seed 
seems to have come to the fore only during more recent years, 
the present custom being to make use of freshly imported seed 
each year. 
In order to get a tall uniform crop, the quantity of seed 
sown per acre and the method of its distribution are important 
considerations. The quantity of seed sown varies from 2 to 
2^ bushels per acre, although, when it is desired to obtain 
particularly fine fibre, as much as 3 to 3^ bushels of seed are 
used. After the seed-bed has been prepared, the seed is sown 
broadcast by hand or by means of a “ fiddle,” or it is distribu- 
ted from a hand seed-barrow. Bowing should be done. early 
