172 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
be needless to add that the largest and longest are best. De- 
cayed laborers, women, and children make it their business to 
procure and prepare them. As soon as they are cut, they 
must be flung into water, and kept there, for otherwise they 
will dry and shrink, and the peel will not run. At first a person 
would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or rind, 
so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom 
that may support the pith; but this, like other feats, soon be- 
comes familiar even to children; and we have seen an old 
woman, stone blind, performing this business with great dis- 
patch, and seldom failing to strip them with the nicest regu- 
larity. When these rushes are thus far prepared, they must 
lie out on the grass to be bleached, and take the dew for some 
nights, and afterwards be dried in the sun. 
Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the 
scalding fat or grease ; but this knack also is to be attained 
by practice. The careful wife of an industrious Hampshire 
laborer obtains all her fat for nothing; for she saves the 
scummings of her bacon-pot for this use; and, if the grease 
abounds with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate to the 
bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm oven. Where 
hogs are not much in use, and especially by the sea-side, the 
coarser animal oils will come very cheap. A pound of common 
grease may be procured for fourpence, and about six pounds 
of grease will dip a pound of rushes, and one pound of rushes 
may be bought for one shilling; so that a pound of rushes, 
medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings. If men 
that keep bees will mix a little wax with the grease, it will 
give it a consistency, and render it more cleanly, and make the 
rushes burn longer; mutton-suet would have the same effect. 
A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches 
and a half, being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of 
an hour; and a rush of still greater length has been known to 
burn one hour and a quarter. 
