PART III.] MORRIS BIRKBECK, ESQ. 587 



English clothes-brush, the other day for three 

 shillings sterling. It was made of a farthings 

 worth of alder wood and of half a farthings 

 worth of Broom-Corn. An excellent brush. 

 Better than bristles. 1 have Broom-Corn and 

 Seed-Stems enough to make fifty thousand 

 such brushes. I really think I shall send it to 

 England. It is now lying about my barn, and 

 the chickens are living upon the seeds. This 

 plant demands greater heat even than the 

 Indian Corn. It would hardly ripen its seed in 

 England. Indeed it would not. But, if well 

 managed, it would produce a prodigious crop 

 of materials for reed-hedges and thatch. It is of 

 a substance (I mean the main stalk) between 

 that of a cane and that of a reed. It has joints 

 precisely like those of the canes, which you 

 may have seen the Boroughmongers' sons and 

 footmen strut about with, called bamboos. The 

 seed-stalks, which make the, brooms and brushes, 

 might not get so mature in England as to be so 

 good as they are here for those uses : but, I 

 have no doubt, that, in any of the warm lands 

 in Surry, or Kent, or Hampshire, a man might 

 raise upon an acre a crop worth several hundred 

 pounds. The very stout stalks, if properly har 

 vested and applied, would last nearly as long 

 as the best hurdle rods. What beautiful screens 

 they would make in gardens and pleasure 



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