I now proceed to the second part of my subject, viz., the different methods employed to prepare the fibre for manufacture.

After the flax crop has been pulled, when the seeds are separated from the stem, the latter consists of three distinct substances,—the pure fibre, the ligneous stalk, and the gum, glue, or resin, incorporated with fibre. By quantitative analysis, with incineration, the entire plant exclusive of its seed, is stated, by Sir R. Kane, to be composed of the following elements:

Carbon ................ 38·72
Hydrogen .............. 7·33
Nitrogen .............. ·56
Oxygen ................ 48·36
Ashes ................. 5·00
————
100·00

Thus only five per cent. appears to be solid, the rest consisting of gaseous matter. The pure fibre, when analyzed, gives a scarcely appreciable amount of ash, so that the great mass of inorganic matter is contained in the ligneous stem and the gum; the stem containing, according to the same chemist, 1·57 per cent of ash, and the disiccated extract of the steep water, in which the gum had been chemically changed and dissolved, gave 42·01 per cent of ash.

On breaking a stem of flax, and stripping off the fibre, the interior appears hollow, like a stalk of hay. The fibre, though apparently clean, will, on microscopic examination, be found coated with a gummy or resinous matter, which prevents the minute filaments from coming asunder. As this gum cannot be separated by mechanical means, it is necessary to get rid of it by chemical decomposition.

It is probable that, in the earliest period of the linen manufacture, the fibre was employed just as separated mechanically from the stem, and that observation of the effect of water and of the atmosphere, in the bleaching and washing of the linen, equally called attention to the advantage of purifying the fibre, before spinning and weaving, and pointed out the simplest mode by which this purification could be effected. The saturation of the stems, at a temperature of about 70° Fahrenheit, was found to cause decomposition in the gum; and by freeing it from the fibre, rendered the latter capable of being split into finer filaments, and of being more easily spun, while it avoided the great loss in the bleaching of the linen.

The constituents of the gum are found, by analysis, to be silica, lime, alumina, potash, chlorides of potassium and sodium, magnesia, and sulphuric, phosphoric, and carbonic acids. The most usual mode of decomposing the gum is that termed steeping or retting—the flax stems, either when freshly pulled, or after being dried, being immersed in lakes, rivers, or pits artificially formed and filled with water; when the putrefaction ensues, the gases and salts are set free from the earthy matters, the earths being held in suspension by the water, the salts dissolved in it, and the gases evolved. In seven to twenty-one days the purification of the fibre is complete, the flax stems are taken out of the water, and after being spread to dry on grass land, they are subjected to the scutching process, which beats away the ligneous interior, and leaves the fibre in a state fit for the manufacturer. This is the system so extensively practised all over Europe by the growers, and nine-tenths of the flax of commerce have been thus treated. In some districts of Holland and Belgium, alder leaves, the mud from the bottoms of the pits, and other substances, are empirically used as a covering for the flax, to impart to the fibre a certain tint.

The river Lys, which flows through the north of France and the south of Belgium, has been found peculiarly suited to flax-steeping, and the celebrity of its waters has given rise to a system of factorage; the growers, even at a considerable distance from its banks, finding a market for their straw with persons whose business is to steep and prepare the fibre for their own profit. They pack it in wooden frames, which are anchored in the stream, and kept, by means of weights, under its surface, and the fibre so treated has a much lighter colour than the most of what is steeped in pools. Latterly a practice has obtained some extent of steeping the flax twice, that is, of taking it out of the river when the fermentation is about half completed, drying it partially on the bank, and then again immersing it until the process is fully completed. It appears that this modification of the usual plan renders the fibre stronger, and gives a larger yield. The peculiar virtues of the river Lys have led many persons to imagine that its waters contain some particular chemical ingredient which acts upon the gum or the fibre. In order to ascertain whether this could be the case, I obtained some of the water from opposite Courtrai, and had it analysed by Professor Hedges, of Queen’s College, Belfast. He did not find anything peculiar, except a small deposit of vegetable fibres, which the microscope showed to be minute filaments of flax. Although it was in mid-winter that the water was taken from the river, and that the steeping is carried on only from April or May to October, the great quantity of flax prepared in this stream apparently causes its waters always to contain, in suspension, a portion of the fibres of the plant. Hence, Professor Hedges supposes that, in addition to the natural advantages of the Lys, from the slowness of its current, and the softness (to use a vulgar but well understood term) of its water, the presence of these small fibrous particles may act like yeast in brewing, and hasten or facilitate the necessary changes in the fresh flax stems, or, in other words, that the whole water of the river may be looked upon as a sort of weak infusion of flax.

Another system of retting prevails, though to a less extent, in the east of Russia, and in certain parts of Germany, Belgium, England, and the United States of America: it is termed dew-retting. The flax straw, in place of being immersed in water, is spread, either after harvesting, or in the following spring, on the open fields, where the rains and dews, and often the snows, effect, by maceration, the decomposition of the gum. This mode is much more uncertain in the duration of the process, and rarely produces a fine quality of fibre, which it has a tendency to render harsh and dry.

Several plans have been suggested, from time to time, for purifying the fibre by direct chemical agents, in order to obviate the defects of the ordinary mode of steeping. These defects consist in the uncertain time required for the process, every change of temperature in the air, and every fall of rain, affecting the fermentation. Thus great attention is demanded from the farmer to ascertain the precise moment when the gum is entirely disengaged, and before the strength of the fibre has been injured by the action of the water, which has become charged with the substances separated from the former, and chemically altered. As the necessary degree of skill and care is not possessed by many farmers, nothing is more frequent than under-retting or over-retting: the fibre in the first events remaining harsh and coarse, and in the second becoming weak and cottony. The agents tried with a view to supersede steeping have been acids, alkalis, lime, soap, &c., but in all cases they have failed to produce a fibre with the qualities sought by the manufacture.

About four years ago, Mr. Schenck, of New York, patented a mode of steeping, which had been employed with advantage in America in the treatment of hemp—the former mode of obtaining the fibre from that plant being analogous to that adopted with flax. His plan, which has since been extensively carried out in Ireland, and tried in Great Britain and Germany, consists in maintaining the water at a uniform high temperature by the means of steam. For this purpose wooden vats are employed, having a false bottom, under which coils of metal pipes are introduced, and the flax straw being packed in, the vats are filled with water, and the steam introduced into