mption in that
country is estimated to exceed one hundred and sixty thousand tons,
a quantity equivalent to eight hundred thousand bales of cotton. In
addition to this, ten millions of bushels of flax-seed are annually
crushed in Great Britain, a large portion of which is drawn from India.

The culture of flax was introduced into this country early in the last
century by the Scotch, who crossed over to Ireland under Elizabeth and
Cromwell, and soon after the siege of Derry transferred their arts and
their industry to this country. Several colonies of these were planted
in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and a large colony was established at
Natfield, New Hampshire, upon a tract twelve miles square, one of the
best sections of the State, situate in the area between Manchester,
Lowell, Lawrence, and Exeter. Here every farmer cultivated his field of
barley and flax, here every woman had her little wheel, and the
article formed the currency of the place;--notes were given payable in
spinning-wheels. Girls were seen beetling the linen on the grass;
and when the harvest over, the men mounted their horses, and with
well-filled saddle-bags threaded the by-roads of the forest to find
a market in Boston, Lynn, Salem, or Newburyport. Fortunes were thus
accumulated and a flourishing academy and two Presbyterian societies are
now sustained by funds thus acquired by the Pinkerton family. But as the
wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per
week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the
spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat
of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the
flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms. The town
of Derry, once the great seat of New-England manufactures, is now
principally distinguished for the Stark, Rogers, and Reed it gave to the
French War and the Revolution, for the Bells, Dinsmores, Wilsons, and
Pattersons it has given to the halls of legislation, and the McKeens,
McGregors, Morisons, and Nesmiths it has furnished to commerce or the
Church.

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 bush