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,
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.