VIIL] ENGLISH STRAW PLAT. 129 



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 pro- 

 duced from English grass-straw, I "next communi- 

 cated 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 com- 

 municate to you a statement of those particulars 

 which you wished to possess, relative to the speci- 

 mens of straw and of plat which I have at dif- 

 ferent times sent to you for the inspection of the 

 Society. 



B. That my statement may not come too abrupt- 

 ly 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 Weathers- 

 field, in Connecticut, had transmitted to the Society 

 a straw-bonnet of very fine materials and manufac- 

 ture ; 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 



