DVA<s CUREIVARION IN BEUGIUM. ~ 249 


The Board have received information through the Foreign 
Office that it is proposed to hold an 
Agricultural exhibition of agricultural machinery at 
pean ey an Krasnoyarsk next year, while an exhibi- 
tion of winnowing and sorting machinery 
is to take place at Marinsk. ; 
At a show of peasant ploughs held last May at Vinnitz in 
the Podolski Government, where 20 of 45 exhibits were 
foreign, the first prize was taken by a front-beamed two- 
wheeled plough from Nikolaieff, costing 13 roubles, chiefly on 
account of its lightness, good make, and cheapness. The 
exhibit taking second prize cost 25 roubles. 
Flax ranks as the second industrial crop of Beloium. It 
occupied in 1895 an area of 75,600 acres, 
pctivation PeOm ww nichis7.524eacres. Or 7Olpen Cemt.n were 
of Flax : 
in Belgium. accounted for by the two provinces of 
Flanders. Fifty years previously, in 18406, 
flax was grown on 73,801 acres in Belgium; by 1866 the 
extent of land under the crop had increased to 140,904 acres ; 
but there was afterwards a fall to 99,000 acres in 1880, and 
this has been followed, as shown above, by a_ further 
decline to 75,600 acres. In 1866, when the crop occupied the 
largest area, 82,135 acres were grown in the provinces of East 
and West Flanders, and of the remaining 57,770 acres 
Hainault had 26,276, Brabant 11,841, Antwerp 9,551, and 
Namur 7,170. In 1895 the acreage returned for the two 
Flanders was 57,524 acres, while Hainault had only 7,815 
acres, Brabant 4,629, Antwerp 3,446, and Namur 1,620. 
The conditions governing the cultivation of flax in Belgium 
are briefly discussed in a recent volume issued by the Ministry 
ot Agriculture and Public Works dealing with the Agri- 
cultural Inquiry of 1895. It appears that it is difficult to 
ascribe any preponderating influence to the physical 
characteristics of the soil in the determination of the 
distribution of this crop, for while it is true that it is grown to 
