STRAW. Apart from the importance of the straw of various cereal plants as a feeding and bedding material in agri culture, such substances also possess no inconsiderable value for packing mer chandise, for thatching, for making mat tresses, and for door mats. Straw is also a paper-making material of some importance, and split, flattened, and col ored it is employed for making fancy articles. But it is in the form of plaits that straw finds its most outstanding industrial application, these being used to an enormous extent for making hats and bonnets, and for small baskets, etc. Wheaten straw is the principal material used in the plait trade, the present great centers of which are Bedfordshire in England, Tuscany in Italy, and Canton in China. At first the plait was what is called whole straw; that is, straw was cut into suitable lengths without knots, and merely pressed flat during the oper ation of plaiting; and so continued till the reign of George I., when it was in great demand for ladies' hats, and some plait was made of split straw. Since
that time split straw has been chiefly used.
The English straw used in plaiting is obtained principally from the varieties of wheat known as the White Chittin and the Red Lammas, which succeed best on the light rich soils of Bedford shire and the neighboring counties. The finest and most costly plaits anywhere made — the Tuscan and Leghorn plaits — are made in Tuscan villages around Florence, and are not split. The straw there used — very fine in the pipe and bright in color — is produced from a variety of wheat thickly sown and grown in a light thin soil. Panama hats are not made of straw but of the leaves of a variety of palm (Carludovica, Palmata). An enormous amount of straw plait, of a common but useful quality, has been sent into the European market from China. The exports of straw manufac tures from the United States in the fis cal year ending June, 1901, were valued at $412,668; imports at $335,669.