212 



iNEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



LEGHORN STRAW. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE ^EW E.VCLA.VD FARMER. 



Sir — I send you for publication in your pa- 

 per, (if it shall be found worthy a placp,) 

 some account of the uheat, from wliirh the 

 Leghorn hats are made. In the summer of 

 1821, I wrote to Jlr. .\ppleton, our Consul at 

 Leghorn, requesting him to give me some ac- 

 count of the straw, from which these bonnets 

 are made ; owing to an accident, my letter did 

 not go by the vessel which 1 intended. :uid I did 

 not expect it to go by any other — but the letter 

 found its way to Italy, and this gentleman, in 

 the most obliging and attentive manner, caused 

 four bushels of Tuscany Avheat, with an account 

 ci the mode of cultivation and preparation to 

 be forwarded to me ; it came by the »vay of 

 Providence, and so late in the spring, that I was 

 not able to have it d.stribuied and cultivated, 

 w ith that care and attention which I was desir- 

 ous it might be. Mr. Appleton's account of the 

 cultivation of Leghorn straw, and the prepara- 

 tion of it for manufacture, is contained in the 

 lollowing extracts from his letter to rae. 



"Leghorn, 15th Sept. 1821. 

 "Sir — The letter you honored me with, was 

 handed me in the course of last month. 1 im- 

 mediately wrote to a friend at Castel Fiorentino 

 to obtain the best seed for straw, but it was too 

 early, which will apologise for not availing my- 

 self of the vessel you mentioned. I have now 

 procured tour bushels, and forward it to you by 

 the brig I^Iary, of Providence, Capt. Dagget. — 

 You have my ardent wishes lor the success of 

 the trial of this grain ; but should you find you 

 are still deficient of any information I can furn- 

 ish, have the goodness to inform me, and be as- 

 sured it will exceedingly increase my gratitica- 

 lion if I should be able to remove every obsta- 

 cle to the attainment of your views. 



The grain which produces the straw worked 

 into hats at Tuscany, is here called " Marzola," 

 or March Grain. It is sown in March and ar- 

 rives at its appropriate maturity, for the manu- 

 facturing of hats, from the twentieth to the tliir- 

 tieth of June. It is sown in somewhat dry and 

 elevated ground^, which should be broken three, 

 four, or more days successively, to prepare it 

 for planting the seed, when four times as much 

 seed, as is usually planted of wheat intended for 

 bread, should be planted on the same space of 

 ground ; for the thicker it is planted, the liner 

 will be the straw. It is here gathered when 

 the plant is in blossom, which as I have before 

 said, is in Tuscany towards the end of June. — 

 When it has risen to this state of maturity, it is 

 about eighteen inches high ; it is then pulled 

 up by the roots and left two or three days on 

 dry ground to air, after which each straw is 

 taken up separately and stripped of a thin pclli- 

 ele which covers it, beginning at the top and so 

 down to the first joint, above the surface of the 

 ground; the tiift joint and root are broken olT, 

 and are of no value. After this operation is per- 

 formed on each straw, they are tied into small 

 bundles of about four inches diameter; and im- 

 mediately after, in order to bleach them, the 

 bundles which are slightly bound with a straw, 

 arc opened at both ends in the form of a fan, 

 laid on a field of grass to take the nightly dew, 

 and thus left for two months, carefully observ- 

 ing to put them under cover whenever there is 

 an appearance of rain, as the latter is prejudi- 



cial. When bleached, they are opened and 

 separated into three qualities, which form the 

 superfine, fine, and ordinary. The first is not 

 only formed from the finest straws, but should 

 be of the same size and color, and without spots 

 or stains ; from these last are fabricated hats 

 even to No. 100, which signifies 100 circles on 

 the brim, which are easily counted. The straw 

 when prepared is carefully preserved in dry 

 chambers, when it is good for two or even for 

 three years use. The working the straw into 

 hats commences in September. The grounds 

 in Tuscany, in which is produced this straw, are 

 from ten to twenty miles from Florence, and lie 

 in lat. 43,'IG. The thermometer of Fahren- 

 heit rarely rises above Oo, and there are not ten 

 days in winter when it descends to freezing 

 point, or 32. I have not observed in twenty- 

 three years of my residence here, more than 

 three or four times the thermometer at five de- 

 grees below congelation ; and this extreme at 

 most for a single day. From November to the 

 end of February, the thermometer, with the ex- 

 ception I have mentioned, marks from 40 to 60. 

 In the last six years I have not seen any snow 

 on the level country, except about one inch for 

 two or three days the last winter, while there 

 is no example of the freezing of grounds. Hav- 

 ing been absent from my native country for five 

 and thirty years, 1 shall not hazard an opinion 

 if the climate of Massachusetts is congenial to 

 the growth of this plant; but as I am informed 

 it succeeds in tlie plains of Lombardy and near 

 to the Alps, I do not despair of a proportionate 

 success in your state. In the villages where the 

 straw hats are fabricated, it is the employment 

 of all the inhabitants, from the oldest men and 

 women down to children of three or four years. 

 It is likewise their amusement, for they carry a 

 little bunch into their afternoon or evening as- 

 semblage, and it is worked with as much ap- 

 parent inattention as our women knit in Ameri- 

 ca. On one side of the waist is fastened the lit- 

 tle bunch of straw, and on the other the strands 

 they have braided. They have brought this 

 interesting and pleasing employment to such 

 perfection, that 1 have seen hats which were 

 bought at two hundred dollars each.'' 



It was not until the middle of .\pril, that this 

 wheat came to Boston. I caused it to be distribu- 

 ted ; one bushel to Leman Stone, Esq. of Der- 

 by, the President of the Agricultural Society 

 for the county of N. Haven ; from this parcel 1 

 have not received any account, but hope soon to 

 have a full report from that quarter; other par- 

 cels went to the states of Maine, N. Hampshire, 

 Vermont, and in one instance to N. York ; other 

 small parcels were disposed of in my own im- 

 mediate neighborhood. I have received but 

 few accounts of the culture of this plant, but 

 I'rom my own observations upon what I saw 

 growing, 1 am fully in the belief that this grain 

 can be cultivated in New England, and the man- 

 ufacture of hats eventually carried to as great 

 perfection, as it has attained in Tuscany. 



The finest and best straw which 1 have seen, 

 was cultivated by Doctor M. Spaulding of Am- 

 herst, N. H. (an ingenious and scientific agricul- 

 turist;) an account of his mode is contained in 

 the following extract from his letter to me on 

 the subject, to wit : — " I sowed the wheat on 

 the 20th of April, 1822, just as 1 received it, 

 without .any preparation, except mixing with it 

 a little air slacked lime. The quantity of seed 



put upon the ground, was agreeable to the in- 

 structions which you had published in the news- 

 papers. The land was a light, dry, sandy loam 

 soil, rather elevated, and not entirely free from 

 stones. It had been planted with potatoes the 

 year before. The wheat or straw [from forget- 

 fulness] stood a few days longer in the field, 

 before gathering, than the newspaper instruc- 

 tions would seem to allow ; no peculiar atten- 

 tion was paid to the preparation of the ground, 

 more than is common for the sowing of oats, or 

 any other spring grain. I am of opinion that 

 you sowed yours upon too rich a soil, that my 

 success was not owing to superior skill, but in- 

 ferior soiiy The next best sample which I 

 saiv was cultivated by John Hubbard, a farmer 

 in Groton. His account is, that towards the 

 last of April, he sowed one pint of the wheat 

 which came from Tuscany, upon a piece of 

 ground that had been planted the preceding 

 year ; that in the centre of the field, which he 

 sowed with oats, he staked out a small square, 

 taking care not to carr}' any of the oats into it, 

 and sowed his wheat about four times as thick 

 as is sown to raise spring wheat ; being thus 

 shaded on the sides by the oats, it grew very 

 even, was but very little rusted, that he reaped 

 some part of it, and had about two quarts of 

 grain, which he thinks equal in quality to the 

 seed he sowed ; that he saved a parcel of the 

 straw, which an aged motl>er prepared agreea- 

 ble to Mr. Appleton's directions, and from 

 which she made a hat, of a quality about equal 

 to No. 10, [or 10 rims to a good sized brim,] 

 the straw appeared as tough aad firm as the im- 

 ported hats. 



In most cases, where I saw the wheat grow- 

 ing, it appeared to have been planted in rows, 

 on a rich soil, and instead of attaining the 

 height of 18 inches, as it does in Tuscany, ac- 

 tualfy grew upwards of 4 feet, and was too 

 coarse for use, though it retained a supple tex- 

 ture, and it appeared to me might well have 

 been wrought into carpets. 1 should recom- 

 mend to those who intend to cultivate this wheat, 

 to have one field for the purpose of raising seed, 

 vThere the preparation of the ground should be 

 like that which good cultivators of spring wheat 

 use, and I am clearly of opinion, that the earlier 

 it is sown in the spring the better will be the 

 chfince of a crop. 



Those who cultivate for the straw had better 

 sow broad cast, and eight times as thick as is 

 usually sown for bread-stuff; the ground should 

 be a light loam, without any manure. It is well 

 known to all farmers, that the thicker any grain, 

 or grass, flax or other plants, are sown, the fin- 

 er will be the straw ; and a gravelly knoll, such 

 as we sometimes observe in a rye field, where 

 there is a slender straw, almost without heads, 

 appears to be well adapted to produce fine straw, 

 and where the field or patch of ground can be 

 surrounded with other grain (so as not to have 

 any outside rows,) the straw will be brighter, 

 and less liable to rust. 



How far the process used by the straw-braid- 

 ers in Massachusetts, of bleaching with brim- 

 stone, can be successfully applied to the Leg- 

 horn straw, in preference to the slow process 

 used in Tuscany, of bleaching by the dew, lime 

 and experience can determine. 



The manufacture of straw in the vicinity 

 where I reside, is annually becoming a more 

 important branch of industry, which is wholly 



