The export of jute from India to England for 1859 was sixty thousand tons.  The export of gunny-cloth from India to the United States in the same year amounted to several millions of pieces.

Why should not this valuable plant be introduced into America?  It requires the same season and soil as our Indian corn, and would doubtless flourish in the rich alluvial lands of the West, and furnish a very cheap and useful domestic manufacture for our Western farmers.

The term Linen is doubtless derived from Linum, the classic and botanic name of flax.  In Holy Writ, Moses called down the hail upon the growing flax of Lower Egypt, and Isaiah speaks of those “that work in fine flax.”  According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians wore linen.  Plutarch informs us that the priests of Isis wore linen on account of its purity, and mentions a tradition that flax was used for clothing “because the color of its blossom resembles the ethereal blue which surrounds the world”; and he adds, that the priests of Isis were buried in their sacred vestments.  An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated from flax.

Flax is sown in the spring and harvested in the summer, and requires but three months for its growth.  While cotton grows in hot climates only, flax grows both under the tropics and in temperate climates, and as far north as Russia, Ireland, and Canada; and while at the South it runs mostly to seed, the best varieties are produced in Normandy, Belgium, and Poland.

In another particular flax has the advantage over cotton.  While the latter, under the ordinary course of cultivation in South Carolina, yields but one bale to four acres, and in virgin soil rarely more than one bale to two acres, flax yields in good soil from five to eight hundred pounds of fibre to the acre, which may be converted into flax-cotton by modern machinery; and as the product has but three per cent. waste, while cotton loses eleven per cent. in its manufacture, the flax-cotton which is produced from a single acre is the equivalent of one to two bales of cotton.

With these important advantages, namely, its adaptation to a northern climate where the white man can labor, and a capacity for yielding so large an amount of fibre, flax holds a high place in the list of textile materials.

Flax can be raised with very moderate expense up to the time of harvest.  If the soil is free from weeds, it requires little more preparation, care, or expense for its culture than wheat or barley.  But from this point onward a large expenditure of labor is requisite, which greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle by skilful and long-continued labor.