d Italy each one-fifth. The
remainder is grown in the Levant, Spain, and France.

Most of the raw silk of China is exported from Shanghai and Canton; that
of Japan is shipped mainly from Yokohama. Among European countries Italy
is the first producer of raw silk, and France the chief manufacturer.
By the operation of a heavy tariff a considerable manufacture of silk
textiles has grown up in the United States. New York City and Paterson,
N.J., are the chief centres of the industry.

The southern part of the United States offers an ideal locality for
sericulture. Various attempts at silk-worm breeding have failed from
lack of training, but not on account of geographic conditions.

=Flax.=--The flax of commerce, the basis of linen cloth, is the bast or
inner bark-fibre of an annual plant (_Linum usitalissimum_, _i.e._, most
useful fibre), native probably to the Mediterranean basin. It ranks
among the oldest known textiles. Bundles of unwrought fibre have been
found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and linen cloth constituted
a part of the sepulture wrappings of the ancient Egyptian dead.

Flax has a very wide range, thriving in the colder parts of Europe as
well as in tropical Asia; it does equally well in the dry summers of
California or the moist regions of the Mississippi Valley. The chief
requisite is a firm soil that contains plenty of nutrition.

After the stalks have passed maturity they are pulled up by hand;
"rippled," or deprived of their seeds and leaves; "retted," or moistened
in soft water until the bast separates; "broken" and "scutched" by a
machine which gets rid of the woody fibres; and finally the loosened
bast fibre is "hetcheled" or combed in order to separate the long, or
"line," threads from the "tow" or refuse.

Russia produces more than one-half the world's crop, but the finest and
choicest is that known as Courtrai fibre, which is grown in Belgium.
This is thought to be due to the quality of the water in the Lys River.
A considerable amount of flax grown elsewhere in Europe is sent to this
part of Belgium to be retted. Ireland and Germany produce considerable
amounts, and a small quantity is grown in the United States.

The prepared flax is used in the manufacture of linen cloth, and the
latter is almost exclusively used for table-cloths, napkins,
shirt-bosoms, collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. France is noted for the
manufacture of linen lawns and cambrics, and Belfast, Ireland, for
ta