LINSEED AND FLAX.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 123, Issue 123, 17 April 1895, Page 4

LINSEED AND FLAX.

Doea harvesting the linseed from flax deteriorate the value cf the crop for fihre ? is a question often raised; In Holland, which is famous for the superior quality of its flax, the seed from a fibre crop is regularly veaied, the yield being from nine to eighteen bushels per acre. A firm of flax merchants of Rotterdam, taking exception to a statement made in a roprrfc on the cultivation of flax by the United States commercial agent :it Dunfermline, to the effect that in Holland flax is raised chiefly foi the need and that the quality of the fibre is thus injure!, writes that the saving of the seed does not in the least m. terfero with the raising and the saving of tb ) fibre in A 1 condition. It is admitted thut a v,c:l raised crop of flax, steeped in the Diver Lys (at Couvtrai, Belgium), renders a light, yellowish fibre of higher value than the same flax rotted in Holland in still water (blue), bat it is a fact that good to fine threads are seldom spun without at least an addition or mixture of superior blue Dutch flax, which fact several first-class thread spinners will ronflnn. How, it is asked, is blue fibre of high va'ue to he produced in Holland if saving of the seed interfe-cd with the raising of the superior c'a-s required for such an article ? T >is idea was held by flax grower* in Ii eland for one hundred yra'v, but gradually they came to fl e'v senses, and in ssme parts of frela 'd the saving of the seed has h en tried wi h success for the la«t three years without reducing the value of the fibre, and a fe-v weeks aeo sr.niß splendid seed tvns 6cen, the fihre of which brought 12s Gd per store (£IOO per ton") in the Balymena market, heim then the highest quotaHon realised for flax in Ireland. Ifc seems e'ear that both the teed and the fibre can be produced of good quality.