called Palea: for it is first meat that is laid tofore beasts, namely
in some countries as in Tuscany. As Pliny saith, if the seed be
touched with tallow or grease it is spoilt and lost. Among the best
wheat sometimes grow ill weeds and venomous, as cockle and other such,
also there it is said, of corrupt dew that cleaveth to the leaves
cometh corruption in corn, and maketh it as it were red or rusty.
Among all manner corn, wheat beareth the prize, and to mankind nothing
is more friendly, nothing more nourishing.

Flax groweth in even stalks, and bears yellow flowers or blue, and
after cometh hops, and therein is the seed, and when the hop beginneth
to wax, then the flax is drawn up and gathered all whole, and is then
lined, and afterward made to knots and little bundles, and so laid in
water, and lieth there long time. And then it is taken out of the
water, and laid abroad till it be dried, and twined and wend in the
sun, and then bound in pretty niches and bundles. And afterward
knocked, beaten, and brayed, and carfled, rodded and gnodded, ribbed
and heckled, and at the last spun. Then the thread is sod and
bleached, and bucked, and oft laid to drying, wetted and washed, and
sprinkled with water until that it be white, after divers working and
travail.

Flax is needful to divers uses. For thereof is made clothing to wear,
and sails to sail, and nets to fish and to hunt, and thread to sew,
ropes to bind, and strings to shoot, bonds to bind, lines to mete and
to measure, and sheets to rest in, and sacks, bags, and purses, to put
and to keep things in. And so none herb is so needful, to so many
divers uses to mankind, as is the flax.

Ryndes thereof [_i.e._ of Mandragora] sodden in wine cause sleep,