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.
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.