and bonnets from _Italy_, greatly superior, in durability and beauty, to
those made in England. The plat made in England was made of the straw of
_ripened grain_. It was, in general, _split_; but the main circumstance
was, that it was made of the straw of _ripened grain_; while the Italian
plat was made of the straw of grain, or grass, _cut green_. Now, the straw
of ripened grain or grass is brittle; or, rather, rotten. It _dies_ while
standing, and, in point of toughness, the difference between it and straw
from plants cut green is much about the same as the difference between a
stick that has _died on the tree_, and one that has been _cut from the
tree_. But besides the difference in point of toughness, strength, and
durability, there was the difference in beauty. The colour of the Italian
plat was better; the plat was brighter; and the Indian straws, being
_small whole_ straws, instead of small straws made by the splitting of
large ones, here was a _roundness_ in them, that gave _light and shade_ to
the plat, which could not be given by our flat bits of straw.
212. It seems odd, that nobody should have set to work to find out how the
Italians _came_ by this fine straw. The importation of these Italian
articles was chiefly from the port of LEGHORN; and therefore the bonnets
imported were called _Leghorn Bonnets_. The straw manufacturers in this
country seem to have made no effort to resist this invasion from Leghorn.
And, which is very curious, the Leghorn _straw_ has now began to be
imported, and to be _platted in this country_. So that we had _hands_ to
plat as well as the Italians. All that we wanted was the _same kind of
straw_ that the Italians had: and it is truly wonderful that these
importations from Leghorn should have gone on increasing year after year,
and our domestic manufacture dwindling away at a like pace, without there
having been any inquiry relative to the way in which the Italians _got
their straw_! Strange, that we should have imported even _straw_ from
Italy, without inquiring whether similar straw could not be got in
England! There really seems to have been an opinion, that England could no
more produce this straw than it could produce the sugar-cane.
213. Things were in this state, when in 1821, a Miss WOODHOUSE, a farmer's
daughter in CONNECTICUT, sent a straw-bonnet of her own making to the
_Society of Arts_ in London. This bonnet, superior in fineness and beauty
to anything of the kind that had come from Leghorn, the maker stated to
consist of a sort of grass of which she sent along with the bonnet some of
the _seeds_. The question was, then, would these precious seeds _grow and
produce plants in perfection in England_? A large quantity of the seed had
not been sent: and it was therefore, by a member of the Society, thought
desirable to get, with as little delay as possible, a considerable
quantity of the seed.
214. It was in this stage of the affair that my attention was called to
it. The member just alluded to applied to me to get the seed from America.
I was of opinion that there could be no sort of grass in Connecticut that
would not, and that _did not_, grow and flourish in England. My son JAMES,
who was then at New-York, had instructions from me, in June 1821, to go to
Miss WOODHOUSE, and to send me home an account of the matter. In
September, the same year, I heard from him, who sent me an account of the
cutting and bleaching, and also a specimen of the plat and grass of
Connecticut. Miss WOODHOUSE had told the Society of Arts, that the grass
used was the _Poa Pratensis_. This is the _smooth-stalked meadow-grass_.
So that it was quite useless to send for _seed_. It was clear, that we had
_grass enough_ in England, if we could but make it into straw as handsome
as that of Italy.
215. Upon my publishing an account of what had taken place with regard to
the American Bonnet, _an importer of Italian straw_ applied to me to know
whether I would _undertake to import American straw_. He was in the habit
of importing Italian straw, and of having it platted in this country; but
having seen the bonnet of Miss WOODHOUSE, he was anxious to get the
American straw. This gentleman showed me some Italian straw which he had
imported, and as the seed heads were not on, I could not see what plant it
was. The gentleman who showed the straw to me, told me (and, doubtless, he
believed) that the plant was one that _would not grow in England_. I
however, who looked at the straw with the eyes of a farmer, perceived that
it consisted of dry _oat_, _wheat_, and _rye_ plants, and of _Bennet_ and
other _common grass_ plants.
216. This quite settled the point of _growth in England_. It was now
certain that we had the plants in abundance; and the only question that
remained to be determined was, Had we SUN to give to those plants the
beautiful colour which the American and Italian straw had? If that colour
were to be obtained by _art_, by any chemical applications, we could
obtain it as easily as the Americans or the Italians; but, if it were the
gift of the SUN solely, here might be a difficulty impossible for us to
overcome. My experiments have proved that the fear of such difficulty was
wholly groundless.
217. It was late in September 1821 that I obtained this knowledge, as to
the kind of plants that produced the foreign straw. I could, at that time
of the year, do nothing in the way of removing my doubts as to the _powers
of our Sun_ in the bleaching of grass; but I resolved to do this when the
proper season for bleaching should return. Accordingly, when the next
month of _June_ came, I went into the country for the purpose. I made my
experiments, and, in short, I proved to demonstration, that we had not
only the _plants_, but the _sun_ also, necessary for the making of straw,
yielding in no respect to that of America or of Italy. I think that, upon
the whole, we have greatly the advantage of those countries; for grass is
more abundant in this country than in any other. It flourishes here more
than in any other country. It is here in a greater variety of sorts; and
for _fineness_ in point of size, there is no part of the world which can
equal what might be obtained from some of our _downs_, merely by keeping
the land ungrazed till the month of July.
218. When I had obtained the straw, I got some of it made into plat. One
piece of this plat was equal in point of colour, and superior in point of
fineness, even to the plat of the bonnet, of Miss WOODHOUSE. It seemed,
therefore, now to be necessary to do nothing more than to _make all this
well known to the country_. As the SOCIETY OF ARTS had interested itself
in the matter, and as I heard that, through its laudable zeal, several
_sowings of the foreign grass-seed_ had been made in England, I
communicated an account of my experiments to that Society. The first
communication was made by me on the 19th of February last, when I sent to
the Society, specimens of my straw and also of the plat. Some time after
this I attended a committee of the Society on the subject, and gave them a
verbal account of the way in which I had gone to work.
219. The committee had, before this, given some of my straw to certain
_manufacturers_ of plat, in order to see what it would produce. These
manufacturers, with the exception of one, brought _such_ specimens of plat
as to induce, at first sight, any one to believe that it was nonsense to
think of bringing the thing to any degree of perfection! But, was it
_possible_ to believe this? Was it possible to believe that it could
_answer_ to import straw from Italy, to pay a twenty per cent. duty on
that straw, and to have it platted here; and that it would _not answer_
to turn into plat straw of just the same sort grown in England? It was
impossible to believe _this_; but possible enough to believe, that persons
now making profit by Italian straw, or plat, or bonnets, would rather that
English straw should come to shut out the Italian and to put an end to the
Leghorn trade.
220. In order to show the character of the reports of those manufacturers,
I sent some parcels of straw into Hertfordshire, and got back, in the
course of five days, _fifteen specimens of plat_. These I sent to the
Society of Arts on the 3d of April; and I here insert a copy of the letter
which accompanied them.
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.
KENSINGTON, April 3, 1823.
SIR,--With this letter I send you sixteen specimens of plat, and also
eight parcels of straw, in order to show the sorts that the plat is made
out of. The numbers of the plat correspond with those of the straw; but
each parcel of straw has two numbers attached to it, except in the case of
the first number, which is the _wheat straw_. Of each kind of straw a
parcel of the _stoutest_ and a parcel of the _smallest_ were sent to be
platted; so that each parcel of the straw now sent, except that of the
wheat, refers to _two of the pieces of plat_. For instance, 2 and 3 of the
plat is of the sort of straw marked 2 and 3; 4 and 12 of the plat is of
the sort of straw marked 4 and 12; and so on. These parcels of straw are
sent in order that you may know the _kind_ of straw, or rather, of grass,
from which the several pieces of plat have been made. This is very
_material_; because it is by those parcels of straw that the _kinds of
grass_ are to be known.
The piece of plat No. 16 is _American_; all the rest are from my straw.
You will see, that 15 is the _finest plat of all_. No. 7 is from the
_stout_ straws of the same _kind_ as No. 15. By looking at the parcel of
straw Nos. 7 and 15, you will see what sort of grass this is. The next, in
point of beauty and fineness combined, are the pieces Nos. 13 and 8; and
by looking at the parcel of straw, Nos. 13 and 8, you will see what sort
of grass that is. Next comes 10 and 5, which are very beautiful too; and
the sort of grass, you will see, is the _common Bennet_. The wheat, you
see, is too coarse; and the rest of the sorts are either _too hard_ or
_too brittle_. I beg you to look at Nos. 10 and 5. Those appear to me to
be the thing to supplant the Leghorn. The colour is good, the straws _work
well_, they afford a great _variety of sizes_, and they come from the
common _Bennet grass_, which grows all over the kingdom, which is
cultivated in all our fields, which is in bloom in the fair month of June,
which may be grown as fine or as coarse as we please, and ten acres of
which would, I dare say, make ten thousand bonnets. However, 7 and 15, and
8 and 13, are very good; and they are to be got in every part of the
kingdom.
As to _platters_, it is to be too childish to believe that they are not to
be got, when I could send off these straws, and get back the plat, in the
course of five days. Far _better work_ than this would have been obtained
if I could have gone on the errand myself. What then will people not do,
who regularly undertake the business for their livelihood?
I will, as soon as possible, send you an account of the manner in which I
went to work with the grass. The card or plat, which I sent you some time
ago, you will be so good as to give me back again some time; because I
have now not a bit of the American plat left.
I am, Sir, your most humble and most obedient servant,
WM. COBBETT.
221. I should observe, that these written communications, of mine to the
Society, _belong_, in fact, to it, and will be published in its
PROCEEDINGS, a volume of which comes out every year; but, in this case,
there would have been _a year lost_ to those who may act in consequence of
these communications being made public. The grass is to be got, in great
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 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.
H.--First, as to the _season_ of the year, all the straw, except that of
one sort of couch-grass, and the long coppice-grass, which two were got in
Sussex, were got from grass cut in Hertfordshire on the 21st of June. A
grass head-land, in a wheat-field, had been mowed during the forepart of
the day, and in the afternoon I went and took a handful here and a handful
there out of the swaths. When I had collected as much as I could well
carry, I took it to my friend's house, and proceeded to prepare it for
bleaching, according to the information sent me from America by my son;
that is to say, I put my grass into a shallow tub, put boiling water upon
it until it was covered by the water, let it remain in that state for ten
minutes, then took it out, and laid it very thinly on a closely-mowed lawn
in a garden. But I should observe, that, before I put the grass into the
tub, I tied it up in small bundles, or sheaves, each bundle being about
six inches through at the butt-end. This was necessary, in order to be
able to take the grass, at the end of ten minutes, out of the water,
without throwing it into a confused mixture as to tops and tails. Being
tied up in little bundles, I could easily, with a prong, take it out of
the hot water. The bundles were put into a large wicker basket, carried to
the lawn in the garden, and there taken out, one by one, and laid in
swaths as before-mentioned.
I.--It was laid _very thinly_; almost might I say, that no stalk of grass
covered another. The swaths were _turned_ once a day. The bleaching was
completed at the end of _seven days_ from time of scalding and laying
out. June is a fine month. The grass was, as it happened, cut on the
_longest day in the year_; and the weather was remarkably fine and clear.
But the grass which I afterwards cut in Sussex, was cut in the first week
in August; and as to the weather my journal speaks thus:--
August, 1822.
2d.--Thunder and rain.--_Began cutting grass._
3d.--Beautiful day.
4th.--Fine day.
5th.--Cloudy day--_Began scalding grass, and laying it out._
6th.--Cloudy greater part of the day.
7th.--Same weather.
8th.--Cloudy and rather misty.--_Finished cutting grass._
9th.--Dry but cloudy.
10th.--Very close and hot.--_Packed up part of the grass._
11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th.--Same weather.
15th.--Hot and clear.--_Finished packing the grass._
K.--The grass cut in Sussex was as _well bleached_ as that cut in
Hertfordshire; so that it is evident that we never can have a summer that
will not afford sun sufficient for this business.
L.--The part of the straw used for platting; that part of the stalk which
is _above the upper joint_; that part which is between the _upper joint_
and the seed-branches. This part is taken out, and the rest of the straw
thrown away. But the _whole plant must be cut and bleached_; because, if
you were to take off, _when green_, the part above described, that part
would wither up next to nothing. This part must die in company with the
whole plants, and be separated from the other parts after the bleaching
has been performed.
M.--The time of cutting must vary with the seasons, the situation, and the
sort of grass. The grass which I got in Hertfordshire, than which nothing
can, I think, be more beautiful, was, when cut, generally in _bloom_; just
in bloom. The _wheat_ was in full bloom; so that a good time for getting
grass may be considered to be that when the _wheat is in bloom_. When I
cut the grass in Sussex, the _wheat was ripe_, for reaping had begun; but
that grass is of a very backward sort, and, besides, grew in the _shade_
amongst coppice-wood and under trees, which stood pretty thick.
N.--As to the sorts of grass, I have to observe generally, that in
proportion as the colour of the grass is _deep_; that is to say, getting
further from the _yellow_, and nearer to the _blue_, it is of a deep and
_dead yellow_ when it becomes straw. Those kinds of grass are best which
are, in point of colour, nearest to that of wheat, which is a fresh pale
green. Another thing is, the quality of the straw as to _pliancy_ and
_toughness_. Experience must be our guide here. I had not time to make a
large collection of sorts; but those which I have sent to you contain
three sorts which are proved to be good. In my letter of the 3d instant I
sent you _sixteen_ pieces of plat and _eight_ bunches of straw, having the
seed heads on, in order to show the sorts of grass. The sixteenth piece of
plat was American. The first piece was from _wheat_ cut and bleached by
me; the rest from _grass_ cut and bleached by me. I will here, for fear of
mistake, give a list of the names of the several sorts of grass, the straw
of which was sent with my letter of the 3d instant, referring to the
numbers, as placed on the plat and on the bunches of straw.
PIECES BUNCHES SORTS
OF PLAT. OF STRAW. OF GRASS.
No 1.-- No. 1. --Wheat.
2.} { Melica Caerulea; or, Purple Melica
3.} 2 and 3 { Grass.
4.} { Agrostis Stolonifera; or, Fiorin Grass;
12.} 4 and 12 { that is to say, one sort of Couch-grass.
5.}
10.} 5 and 10 Lolium Perenne; or Ray-grass.
6.} { Avena Flavescens; or, Yellow Oat
11.} 6 and 11 { grass.
7.} { Cynosurus Cristatus; or Crested
15.} 7 and 15 { Dog's-tail grass.
8.} { Anthoxanthum Odoratum; or, Sweet
13.} 8 and 13 { scented Vernal grass.
9.} { Agrostis Canina; or, Brown Bent
14.} 9 and 14 { grass.
O.--These names are those given at the Botanical Garden _at Kew_. But the
same English names are not in the country given to these sorts of grass.
The _Fiorin grass_, the _Yellow Oat-grass_, and the _Brown-Bent_, are all
called _couch-grass_; except that the latter is, in Sussex, called _Red
Robin_. It is the native grass of the _plains_ of Long Island; and they
call it _Red Top_. The _Ray-grass_ is the common field grass, which is,
all over the kingdom, sown with clover. The farmers, in a great part of
the kingdom, call it _Bent_, or _Bennett_, grass; and sometimes it is
galled _Darnel-grass_. The _Crested Dog's-tail_ goes, in Sussex, by the
name of _Hendonbent_; for what reason I know not. The _sweet-scented
Vernal-grass_ I have never, amongst the farmers, heard any name for. Miss
WOODHOUSE'S grass appears, from the _plants_ that I saw in the Adelphi, to
be one of the sorts of Couch-grass. Indeed, I am sure that it is a
Couch-grass, if the plants I there saw came from her seed. My son, who
went into Connecticut, who saw the grass growing, and who sent me home a
specimen of it, is now in England: he was with me when I cut the grass in
Sussex; and he says that Miss WOODHOUSE'S was a Couch-grass. However, it
is impossible to look at the specimens of straw and of plat which I have
sent you, without being convinced that there is no want of the raw
material in England. I was, after my first hearing of the subject, very
soon convinced that the grass grew in England; but I had great doubts as
to the capacity of our _sun_. Those doubts my own experiments have
completely removed; but then I was not aware of the great effect of the
_scalding_, of which, by the way, Miss WOODHOUSE had said nothing, and the
knowledge of which we owe entirely to my son James' journey into
Connecticut.