It is supposed, also, to have health-giving virtues; for in Germany, when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon the turf on Midsummer day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea being that as the flax-seed grows so the infant will gradually grow stronger.

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.

The two captives, it may be mentioned, scornfully refused to admit any knowledge of the "woman's work" of flax-dressing.

My uninteresting flax-hair is hidden.

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.

I've no need to turn a hand to the flax-wheel for ten years if I've no mind.