134 
Some Minor Farm Crops. 
course for tlie farmer to adopt is to grow the crop primarily 
for fibre and secondarily for seed, that is, to harvest his crop 
at a time when the seed is developed to the minimum for 
it to be of commercial value, so that the fibre may suffer as 
little as possible. It is everywhere agreed to be the best 
practice to harvest the line crop when the lower part of the 
stem begins to change colour from green to yellow, when 
about one-third of the stem has so changed and when the 
leaves to about half-way up the stem have changed colour and 
fallen. At this stage an examination of the seeds within the 
older capsules shows them to be just changing from a full 
green colour to a brownish tint : a change which is observed 
early in July, before the harvesting of the crops commences, 
a fact which stands much in favour of the line crop. 
The value of the line crop depends largely upon the manner 
in which it is harvested. It is necessary that the stems be 
arranged parallel with one another in neat bundles. So far, no 
machine has proved capable of accomplishing this satisfactorily, 
so that it is necessary to pull the flax and to tie it into 
bundles by hand. Pulling is done only in dry weather and 
should be accomplished with all possible haste, because in the 
warm weather the ripening process proceeds rapidly. When 
pulled the plants are laid down evenly on the ground and are 
afterwards collected together and tied up into small sheaves by 
twisting a few of the stems round them just below the seed 
bolls. 
In order to allow the after-ripening of the seed to take 
place the sheaves are stood upon end in 'clusters in the field, 
and are occasionally turned for some few days ; or they are 
arranged in rows across the field, the object being to dry the 
crop completely before it is put into the rick or the seed taken 
off. The seed is removed from the straw by various simple 
devices. In some localities the method known as rippling is 
adopted. This consists of dividing the sheaves into bundles of 
convenient size and then drawing the top ends of the handfuls 
of straw through the teeth of a vertically placed iron comb, the 
teeth of wdiich are too close together to allow the seed bolls to 
pass between. The collected capsules are subsequently passed 
between rollers or threshed by some form of flail. In Somerset, 
instead of rippling off the seed, the custom is to pass the 
top ends of the straw between the butt-ends of two revolving 
wooden rollers fixed at such a distance apart that the straw is 
practically untouched, and yet close enough together to crush 
the seed capsules and to free the seed without damaging it. 
One advantage of this method is that the capsules are separated 
from the straw and the seed threshed by one and the same 
operation. 
