15, and 8 and 13, are very good; and they are to be got in every part of the kingdom.

As to platters, it is to be too childish to believe that they are not to be got, when I could send off these straws, and get back the plat, in the course of five days. Far better work than this would have been obtained, if I could have gone on the errand myself. What, then, will people not do, who regularly undertake the business for their livelihood?

I will, as soon as possible send you an account of the manner in which I went to work with the grass. The card of plat, which I sent you some time ago, you will be so good as to give me back again sometime; because I have now not a bit of the American plat left. I am, Sir,

Your most humble and

Most obedient Servant,

WM. COBBETT.

221. I should observe, that these written communications of mine to the Society, belong, in fact, to it, and will be published in its PROCEEDINGS, a volume of which comes out every year; but, in this case, there would have been a year lost to those who may act in consequence of these communications being made public. The grass is to be got, in great quantities and of the best sorts, only in June and July; and the Society's volume does not come out till December. The Society has, therefore, given its consent to the making of the communications public through the means of this little work of mine.

222. Having shown what sort of plat could be produced from English grass-straw, I next communicated to the Society an account of the method which I pursued in

the cutting and bleaching of the grass. The Letter in which I did this I shall here insert a copy of, before I proceed further. In the original the paragraphs were numbered from one to seventeen: they are here marked by letters, in order to avoid confusion, the paragraphs of the work itself being marked by numbers.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.

Kensington, April 14, 1823.

A. SIR,-Agreeably to your request, I now communicate to you a statement of those particulars, which you wished to possess, relative to the specimens of Straw and of Plat, which I have, at different times, sent to you for the inspection of the Society.

B. That my statement may not come too abruptly upon those Members of the Society, who have not had an opportunity of witnessing the progress of this interesting inquiry, I will take a short review of the circumstances which led to the making of my experiments.

C.-In the month of June 1821, a gentleman, a Member of the Society, informed me, by letter, that a Miss WOODHOUSE, a farmer's daughter of Weathersfield in Connecticut, had transmitted to the Society a straw-bonnet of very fine materials and manufacture; that this bonnet (according to her account) was made from the straw of a sort of grass called poa pratensis; that it seemed to be unknown, whether the same grass would grow in England; that it was desirable to ascertain whether this grass would

"grow in England; that at all events it was desirable to get from America some of the seed of this grass; and that, for this purpose, my informant, knowing that I had a son in America, addressed himself to me, it being his opinion, that, if materials, similar to those used by Miss WOODHOUSE, Could by any means be grown in England, the benefit to the nation must be considerable.

D. In consequence of this application, I wrote to my son James (then at New York), directing him to do what he was able in order to cause success to the undertaking. On the receipt of my letter, in July, he went from New York to Weathersfield, (about a hundred and twenty miles); saw Miss WOODHOUSE, made the necessary inquiries; obtained a specimen of the grass and also of the plat, which other persons at Weathersfield, as well as Miss WOODHOUSE, were in the habit of making; and, having acquired the necessary information as to cutting the grass and bleaching the straw, he transmitted to me an account of the matter; which account, together with his specimens of grass and plat, I received in the month of September.

E-I was now, when I came to see the specimen of grass, convinced that Miss WOODHOUSE'S materials could be grown in England; a conviction which, if it had not been complete at once, would have been made complete immediately afterwards by the sight of a bunch of bonnetstraw imported from Leghorn, which straw was shown to me by the importer, and which I found to be that of two or three sorts of our common grass, and of oats, wheat and rye.

F. That the grass, or plants, could be grown in England was, therefore, now certain, and indeed that they were in

point of commonness next to the earth itself. But, before the grass could, with propriety, be called materials for bonnet-making, there was the bleaching to be performed d; and it was by no means certain that this could be accomplished by means of an English sun, the difference between which and that of Italy or Connecticut was well known to be very great.

G. My experiments have, I presume, completely removed this doubt. I think that the straw produced by me to the Society, and also some of the pieces of plat, are of a colour which no straw or plat can surpass. All that remains, therefore, is for me to give an account of the manner in which I cut and bleached the grass which I have submitted to the Society in the state of

straw.

H.-First, as to the season of the year, all the straw, except that of one sort of couch-grass, and the long coppice-grass, which two were got in Sussex, were got from grass cut in Hertfordshire on the 21st of June. A grass headland, in a wheat field, had been mowed during the forepart of the day; and, in the afternoon, I went and took a handful here and a handful there out of the swaths. When I had collected as much as I could well carry, I took it to my friend's house, and proceeded to prepare it for bleaching according to the information sent me from America by my son; that is to say, I put my grass into a shallow tub, put boiling water upon it until it was covered by the water, let it remain in that state for ten minutes, then took it out, and laid it very thinly on a closely mowed lawn in a garden. But, I should observe, that, before I put the grass into the tub, I tied it up in small bundles, or sheaves, each bundle

being about six inches through at the butt-end. This was necessary, in order to be able to take the grass, at the end of ten minutes, out of the water, without throwing it into a confused mixture as to tops and tails. Being tied up in little bundles, I could easily, with a prong, take it out of the hot water. The bundles were put into a large wicker basket, carried to the lawn in the garden, and there taken out, one by one, and laid in swaths as before mentioned.

1. It was laid very thinly; almost might I say, that no stalk of grass covered another. The swaths were turned once a day. The bleaching was completed at the end of seven days from the time of scalding and laying out. June is a fine month. The grass was, as it happened cut on the longest day in the year; and, the weather was remakably fine and clear. But, the grass which I afterwards cut in Sussex, was cut in the first week in August; and, as to the weather, my journal speaks thus:

August 1822.

2d. Thunder and rain.-Began cutting Grass.

3d.-Beautiful day.

4th.-Fine day.

5th.-Cloudy day.-Began scalding Grass, and laying it out. 6th-Cloudy greater part of the day.

8th. Cloudy, and rather misty.—Finished cutting Grass. 9th.-Dry, but cloudy.

10th. Very close and hot.-Packed up part of the Grass.

11th. Same weather.

12th.

13th. Same weather.'

14th.

15th.-Hot and clear.-Finished packing up Gras