l 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