For years I had heard of the blue flax fields of the valley of the Lys, and of the season between April and September, when along miles of its course, the river is filled with boxes floating the finest linen fiber of the world, the flax of Belgium, North France and Holland, which can be better prepared in its waters than anywhere else. Unfortunately I could see it only under a January rain, but Monsieur de Stoop, a prominent weaver of Courtrai, the town of 36,000 inhabitants which is the valley center, made the Flanders fields bloom again as he described to me the successive steps which lead from them to the woven linen his factory produces—I should say, produced, for the Germans left his plant, along with seven others, an utter ruin. He was unable to explain and apparently no analysis has yet determined, just why the waters of the Lys river surpass all others in their power to rot the encasing straw and generally to cleanse the flax; but one thing is clear, they have established Courtrai as a world market for fine raw linen. Sometimes the stalks need be floated only two or three days, sometimes it requires very much longer to macerate them, the period depending chiefly on the weather, and particularly on the temperature. [Illustration: BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate I) After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge” All meshes made with bobbins: 1 and 4, Valenciennes, round mesh; 2, Valenciennes, square mesh; 3, Valenciennes, mesh almost round; 5, Chantilly; 6, Old Flanders; 7, Point de Paris] [Illustration: BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate II) After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge” Meshes, 8 to 12, made with bobbins: 8, Binche; 9, Malines; 10, Point de Lille, made for France; 11, Point de Lille, destined for Holland; 12, Gauze Point, made with needle, used in Point d’Angleterre; 13, Brussels machine-made net; 14, Ordinary machine-made net.]