FLAX CULTURE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1251, 11 October 1884, Page 3

FLAX CULTURE.

TO THE EDITOB. g IR —Knowing you will be willing to publish anything likely to stimulate a new industry, which is struggling into existence under great difficulties, owing to the apathy of, and want of support from, our farmers in general (I refer to the growth and manufacture of European flax) I enclose extracts from The Londonderry Standard of July 3rd and July 29th, 1884. If our farmers will carefully peruße the same, I think those who have put in a few acres of linseed, will congratulateithemselves on having done so ; as undoubtedly an unlimited demand for samples of fair length and quality will be the result of the short sowing in Ireland as well as the inferior samples they seem to have been producing for some years. It ought to convince the agricultural body generally, that it is each one's duty to grow a limited area, in proportion to acreage of holding ; and not allow the few who have striven hard to start a new industry (which depends on the farmer for material to work) to be disappointed by a short supply. It is not too late to have a considerable area sown yet, as the wet state of the land has, till nor (in aDythinjr like heavy soils), prevented the proper preparation of the surface. I hope in a day or two to see the last of the Company's land drilled,- but being stopped by the heavy ram the week before last, it has been useless to attempt to do anything till the present. The Company have still nine casks of imported seed, and I have a considerable quantity for disposal. Trusting our farmers may seethe importance of raising new products, and supporting manufacturer, I remain, yours respectfully, E. Pilbrow. Temuka, 6th Oct., 1884.

The Londonderry Standard, July 3, says : A meeting of the Council of the Mai Supply i Association was held at 10, Donegall-sguare West, Belfast, on Thursday. Mr William Quartus Ewart occupied the chair. There •were also present—Messrs Charles Bowles, Kobert W. Gordon, John Oulton, and Thos. Valentine. Report for June, 1884:—Owing to the late sowing and backward season this report of the growing flax crop in "Ulster has been delayed, and even now the crop in general is not sufficiently advanced to enable an opinion to be formed as toits.future, which so entirely depends upon the weather; but from the tenor of the replies to queries immediate or early rain seen>s to be generally wanted. This report is compiled from replies to queries from reliable correspondents, extending from the 21st till the 30th inst. It may be remarked that the returns from the several districts indicated a considerable variableness in the condition of the crop. The absence of complaints regarding the quality of the seed is exceptional, but most satisfactory. Another favourable feature iu these returns is that a larger proportion than usual of the steeping dams have been more or less attended to. There is another matter worthy of the attention of farmers, and that is with regard to the retting process. Farmers in Ireland are too frequently inclined to underwater their flax, trusting to the grassing operation making it ready for scutching. Thoroughly and properly •watered flax will produce a fibre of better quality, give a larger yield, and bring a higher price than it does as it is usually treated. For the purpose of ascertaining the area of the several crops in Ireland in the present year the Government enumerators were sent out about the Ist inst., dug a considerable time must yet elapse before the necessary information can be compiled to enable the usual returns to be issued by the Etgietrar-General regarding the acreage under flax in Ireland in the present year. Then follow reports from several districts in the counties of Londondery, Donegal and Tyrone which showed that in some places one-balf and in others only one-third the usual quantity of flax had been put in, and even that was in a backward condition. The same paper of July 29 says:—A correspondent writes as follows in the Irish Farmers' Gazette of Saturday in reference to the important subjects of the linen trade of this province and the cultivation of flax : " He would be a foolhardy person who would deny that flax growing in Ireland is gradually approaching extinction, in face of the fact that in 1869 the area under this crop was, in round numbers, 230,000 acres, and that this year the flax area is variously estimated at from 60,000 to 72,000 acres. This is a most momentous falling off within so short a period a« fifteen years, and should be well calculated to 'give pause' to sll interested. Yet it seems to me that this most portentous decadence is Tiewed in Ulster with philosophical equanimity • in fact, the pro?pect of a erop ' short ' both'in area and length seems to be matter or congratulation ; just as if the gradual cessation of flat culture in Ulster did not

menu <he contemporaneous extinction of the linen industry, and just as if the Ulster farmers' misfortunes were not shared in, wille-nilly, by every Ulster inhabitant, rich or poor. It is this seeming indifference to a ntal drain on one of our few industries which induces me to call on those who are competent to apply a 'stefc processus ' before it is too late. This flax question is a big one, and I can only touch on one or two points in this note. I have laid down an in disputable proposition that flax culture is dying out. A second, as indisputable, is that those who are most in terested are those who are most to blame for that decline and fall. Tbe farmer is the pack mule «n whose back is piled all the blame as regards the worse than heathenish processes by which Irish flax is slaughtered for the market. The spi uer is really the blameworthy person ; for he it was who long ago should have encouraged the formation of companies for relieving the farmer from all concern with flax except his legitimate occupation of growing the crop. If Ulster means to continue a competitor in the linen race it had better set its house in order 5 it had better begin at tbe beginning—at the root and origin of the industry —at the raw material. Since the time when every farmer had his own rettery, was his own scutcher, spinner, and weaver, there has been no serious attempt made to ameliorate the process applied to Irish flax between the time of its pulling and that for its entry within the mill gate. Since the introduction of machinery in the preparation of flax in Ireland the Belgians have so progressed in flax preparation that an expenditure of £4O a ton in the processes between pulling and marketing was quite common, and £4O a ton would about represent the average price paid for Irish flax during the last few years. I find that Belgians were imported here in the year 1842 to teach us ' how to do it ;' and I believe we have had another importation very lately—with little or no result. Tbe Belgian—that is, the Courtrai—system is impossible here. We have do Lys, and if we had, the rights of the riparian owners are paramount. A few fish are of more value in the landlord's eye than would be a uniformly treated flax crop, ret, legally speaking-, it is as criminal to steep flax in the Lys as it would be to steep it in the Lagan. But the Belgian Government winks at the profitable illegality—how profit < able it must be may be e*timated by the fact that Ulster pays at," least one million pounds per annum for Courlai flax. It must not be forgotten that in the blue districts of Belgium the treatment which flax gets is just as oldworld and back-of godspeedish as our own; that quite as dirty and disreputable flax is brought into Bruges market as into, say, Ballymenas. I do not advocate any particular system. I merely proclaim that if we mean to be linen producers we must set about establishing centres for the systematic treatment of green flax."