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be wrapped round the little finger, the root end | flat, and beaten in the machine till the wood is separated, exactly in the same way as the other end was beaten.

The Cleansing Machine.

It is to be used in the same way, in all respects, as the breaking machine, first cleansing one end of the flax, and then turning the other, keeping the flax all the while flat in the hand.

To Hackle.

A common hackle will be found useful in this stage for opening the ends, and may be placed for greater convenience at the side of the breaking and cleansing machine.

This concludes the first process of the machinery intended for the farmer or flax-grower. The second, or manufacturer's process, requires The Refining Machine.

Take a small piece of flax as it comes from the breaking or cleansing machine, pass the seed end through the fluted rollers of the refining machine, and bring it round, laying it flat on the root-end of the flax, forming it into a skein. A few fibres of the end brought round, and looped in the flax on which it is laid, will keep the skein together.

It must be kept flat and even on the machine, which may continue to go round and work the flax till it is brought to any degree of fineness that may be required, and this will not require more than from two to six minutes.

Washing or Whitening.

The flax, when prepared by these machines, without having been water-steeped, or dew-rotted, may be washed in small quantities at a time, either in water only or with soap and water, without any other mixture, and brought by these simple means to the purest white. It is to be wrung several times in water till the water becomes no longer colored from the matter, and care is to be taken that the flax is laid flat like tape, and then spread upon the grass, but it is recommended that the flax should be spun in the yellow state, and then washed in warm water and soap, or boiled with care in water and soap from ten to fifteen minutes, so that, when dried, it will be perfectly white. If the weather should be favorable it would be well to have it dried on the grass.

As to the labor required, the machines are easily wrought by women or girls, and without any assistance from men. The Produce.

As to the produce of different degrees of fineness from a given weight of the raw material, we subjoin the following statement: 112 lbs. of flax from the stack, after the seed was threshed out, produced 30 lbs. in the state No. 1; refined to No. 3 it produced 20 lbs. of flax and 3 lbs. of common tow; 20 lbs. of No. 3 pro- 14 lbs. of No. 4. The loss in weight is caused by the discharge of matter; there is no loss of fibre.

An average crop will produce about two tons to the acre after the seed is threshed out. This will produce one-fourth fibre, making ten cwt. to the acre No. 1.