The great falling off of United States pro duction of flaxseed since 1914 has been accom panied with an almost steady increase in price. From 1890 to 1909 the farm price of flaxseed varied normally between $1 a bushel and $1.50. In 1901 it rose to $1.80, hut the bumper crop of 1902 brought the figure down; in 1910 it rose to $2.34 in October, and in 1911 was $2.05. It fell off again in 1912 to 1914; in 1915 stiffened to $1.48, in 1916 during the later months to $2, and steadily rose to the close of 1917, when the usual miotation was $3 per bushel. A large im portation from South America resulted.
Flaxseed The principal product as understood is linseed oil. The residue after the extraction of the oil is the by-product the oilcake, a valuable cattle food, which, when ground, is known to commerce as linseed oil meal. Out of a crop like that for 1909 (39, 000,000 bushels), there could be manufactured over 75,000,000 gallons of oil and upward of 1,000,000,000 pounds of oilcake. Of this vast quantity of oil the foreign demand only amounts to 100,000 gallons a year. Linseed oil has many uses and the monopoly of its field is so complete it has no substitutes nor adulterants. Probably 75 per cent of the oil manufactured is com pounded with pigments and gums and used as paint and varnish. The remainder is utilized in making linoleum, oilcloth, printer's ink, water proof fabrics not made of rubber, enamel for buttons, for making soap and for a few me dicinal purposes. The oilcake, used only as a cattle food, finds an extensive market abroad.
It is highly prized by European stockraisers, but little appreciated in America. In the fiscal year 1909-10 oilcake to the value of $19,251,012 was shipped to foreign countries, but this trade has fallen off. In 1912 there was imported 737,256 gallons, and in 1914 192,282 gallons. In the manufacture of linseed oil from flaxseed two processes are used, one known as the "old" or hydraulic press process, and the other as the "new") or naphtha process. The old process is in use generally throughout the United States, the new process being represented principally by one mill in Chicago. In the banner year of 1902 there were 40 linseed oil mills in opera tion in the United States. They contained 750
presses with a crushing capacity, if operated 250 days in the year, of 25,000,000 bushels, with an output of 70,000,000 gallons of oil.
The manufacture of linseed oil in the West has become largely localized in cities on and near the Great Lakes — Minneapolis, Chicago, Toledo, etc. Flaxseed in its natural state has no domestic uses on the farm, so that internal com merce involves the entire crop.
small leaf-beetles of the tribe Halticini, of the family Chrysomelider, differing from other forms of this family by their extraordinary leaping power due to the enormously developed hind femora. Many of them are injurious to vegetation from their habit of eating the starting leaves full of holes, causing the drying up and death of the plant; hence certain species are known, as "tobacco flea," "potato flea ,"cabbage flea," etc. In their larval state some species live on the root system of various weeds, the adults doing the principal damage to useful plants. Some species are also leaf-miners, while a few feed on the upper surface of leaves like the young of common leaf-beetles, but most species feed on both sur faces. One of the best remedies is bordeaux mixture, doubly efficient when mixed with paris green and administered in the form of a spray. See LEAF-BEETLES.
either of two species of injurious minute black bugs of the family Cap The commonest is the garden flea-hopper (Halticus uhleri), which feeds and breeds nor mally on clover, but attacks all garden vege tables, commonly on the under sides of leaves, which it punctures so as to cause the death of the tissue in small irregular white patches. It somewhat resembles a flea-beetle (q.v.), but is remarkable in being dimorphic, a portion of the females having well-developed wings, the re mainder being short-winged. The best remedy is kerosene emulsion as an under spray, and the avoidance of planting susceptible crops after the cutting of clover fields. A related species is known as the false flea-hopper ("Igalliastes associatus).
one of the jumping plant lice of the family Psyllidee, familiarly repre sented by a pest of the pear-tree (q.v.). Some of the species make galls.