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 bonnet-straw 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; 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.