ENGLISH FLAX.
It is of peculiar interest to those who have had any concern with the crop to know that the King is to grow a certain number of acres of flax on his Norfolk estates. The crop is perhaps the loveliest there is. The light blue of the flower and the light green of the leaf consort together with a harmony hardly excelled by any plant, even, may I say, the Moysii brier ? But the beauty is nothing beside the use. The products, if we reckon the oily seed as well as the tough fibre, make the flax plant comparable with the olive itself. Recent scientific invention, if not also discovery, has both enlarged the use of the plant and extended the area of its congenial homes. The pre-eminence of Ulster. was chiefly due not to soil or climate as agents, of growth, but to a peculiar quality of moist air at a particular season. This brought about an optimum of conditions for reducing the harvested crop to the right condition for extracting the fibre. Hereditary skill enabled and enables the specialists by mere inspection to tell exactly at what date the stacked plants were ready for the first of the two processes known as retting and scutching.
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