THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1725, 17 April 1888, Page 4

THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

The Wellington correspondent of the Auckland Herald writes: —I have been permitted to peruse some interesting correspondence upon the value of European flax grown as a crop. The Hon. Mr Eisher takes great interest in this subject, and has more than once brought it before Parliament He has an extensive correspondence on the subject, One large manufacturer in Scotland (Dalgleiah and Co, Dundee) estimates that £10,000,000 sterling goes to Eussia every-years for the purchase of flax. What is to prevent a large proportion of this sum coming to New Zealand ‘t The answer is: Nothing but the indifference of the New Zealand agriculturists to the cultivation of this crop. Eifty years ago every English, Scotch, and Irish farmer grew flax for making linen for his own household. The linen manufacturers of the North of Ireland had for a time a mine of wealth in the general cultivation of the flax plant. Elax yields two valuable crops, after which there is a large residuum for feeding and fattening cattle—(l) Linseed, yielding from 101 b to 121 b per acre; (2) the flax stain, worth from £4 to £6 per acre; and (3) bolls or capsules of the seed which cattle are very fond of. An acre of flax will yield 20 bushels of linseed. The Dundee firm above named have offered seed enough gratis to crop a thousand acres, and £4 per ton for the straw, leaving the linseed to the growers. A farmer near Belfast last year refused £2O for the growth of an acre; another farmer in the same district got £6O for a crop of four acres. The Hon. Mr Eisher asks why this crop should not be grown here if it will be profitable. Mr Orr Wallace, of Belfast, has invented a scutching machine which releases the whole of the fibre without waste. This machine is somewhat expensive (£105), but one of them would serve a whole district. It is, moreover, a crop which can be sown and gathered by children.