At the present rates of labor, the culture of flax cannot be revived in this region until the mode of curing and dressing it is cheapened; and there is reason to hope that this revolution is at hand.

At the present moment flax is raised both in India and Ohio for the seed alone.  An acre of ripened flax yields from ten to twenty bushels of seed, and each bushel affords nearly or quite two gallons of linseed-oil.  The well-ripened seed is most prolific in oil.

It has been supposed by some that flax exhausts the soil.  It is undoubtedly true that it does best under a rotation of crops, and that the ingredients it withdraws from the soil should be restored to preserve its fertility.  But the reduction of the plant to ashes shows that its chemical components can be restored at a cost of three dollars per acre, while the properties withdrawn by the seed can be easily supplied by returning in other fertilizers the equivalent for half a ton of flax-seed.  If the oil-cake be consumed upon the farm, little more than the above and its product in manure will be required.

The ashes of the flax-plant have been analyzed.  Dr. Royle, of England, a distinguished writer upon fibrous plants, assures us that the following compound will supply to one acre all that the plant requires, and leave the land as fertile as before the flax was gathered:—­

lbs.      s.    d.
Muriate of Potash            30   cost 2     6
Common Salt                  28     "  0     3
Burned Plaster of Paris      34     "  0     6
Bone-Dust                    54     "  3     3
Epsom Salts                  56     "  4     0
10     6

It has been ascertained by the microscope that wool, cotton, hemp, jute, and flax are composed of minute fibres, each of which forms a hollow tube, and there is a close resemblance between the tubes of each,—­the tube of the cotton, however, collapsing as it ripens.  These tubes in the jute and flax are closely cemented together, and the term Fibrilia has been applied to fibres of the plant when reduced to a short staple like cotton.  The process for effecting this result is very accurately described in a work just published, entitled “Fibrilia.”  The patentees of this invention claim that their process, in the space of twenty-four hours, converts the flax and tow, as they come from the threshing-mill, into an article which may be spun and woven by the same machinery as cotton.  The article produced and lately exhibited at public meetings resembles cotton in its appearance and qualities, with the advantage that it wastes less in the manufacture, has more lustre, and receives a superior color.  The patentees and their friends further claim that this cotton can be raised in all temperate latitudes, at the rate of four to eight hundred pounds per acre, and profess within the past year to have manufactured twelve thousand pounds.

These statements have been confidently made at public meetings in the State House of Massachusetts, and it is understood that a mill containing one hundred looms, half of which are now in operation, has been erected at Roxbury, under the direction of gentlemen who are familiar with the manufacture.  Should the same results be obtained on a large scale which have attended the manufacture of the first few bales, the first step in a great revolution will be effected.