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.