By the process of Mr. S.M.  Allen of Boston, the great outlay of labor which has usually attended the culture and preparation of flax is avoided.  When the plant has attained its full height of twenty to thirty inches, and its seed is ripened, it is harvested like grass with a mowing-machine, dried like hay or oats in the field, and then carried to the threshing-mill.  After the seed is separated, the stalk is transferred to a patent brake, moved by two or four horses, and costing from three to four hundred dollars.  This machine is composed of several sets of fluted iron rollers, between which the stalk passes from one set to another, the rollers gradually diminishing in size, but increasing in rapidity of motion, by means of which the woody texture of the plant is effectually broken and separated.  The filaments are then carried through a coarse card or picker.  The shives are thus separated, and two tons of stalks reduced to half a ton of linten, which may be either taken at once to the retort or baled for shipment.  When the flax is thus reduced by the farmer to linten, the article is reputed to be worth to the manufacturer four cents a pound, or at least twenty dollars for the product of an acre yielding a single ton of flax-straw.

According to this statement the farmer would realize from his crop at least as follows:—­

Estimated value of seed, 14 bushels, at $1.25 $17.50 Estimated value of 500 lbs. of linten, at 4 cts. 20.00 Estimated value of 3/4 of a ton of shives from unrotted stems, valuable for cattle, at $8.00 per ton 6.00

  Produce of an acre $43.50

And this produce would be realized with little more labor than a crop of oats or wheat, returning less than twenty-five dollars to the acre.  Unless the soil should be foul, no weeding would be required, while the breaking would cost little more than a second threshing, and a second crop of turnips can be taken from the same soil.

From the patent brake and the picker the linten is carried to a retort, which may hold from five hundred to three thousand pounds of fibre,—­the capacity of one hundred cubic feet being required for each thousand pounds; and the retort, which may be made from boiler-plates, costs from three hundred to fifteen hundred dollars.  Here the linten is put into a hot bath of air forced through heated water, and thus charged with moisture, which softens the filaments and diminishes the cohesion of the fibres.  After this air-bath, pure water of the temperature of one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty degrees is admitted into the retort, and the linten is immersed in it for five or six hours.

After this steeping process is completed, the water is let off from below, and pure water admitted from above under pressure, until the color begins to change; the fibre is then steeped for three or four hours in a weak solution of soda-ash; the alkali is washed out by the admission of pure water alternating with steam, and, if necessary to complete the bleaching, a weak solution of chlorine is applied.  All this may be effected without removing the linten from the retort.  The product is then dried as in ordinary drying-rooms.