76 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



MORACEtE. 



most valuable species^ Moms alha^ a native o£ northern China and the island of Yezo, is cultivated in 

 China and Japan^ northwestern India, western Asia^ and the countries surrounding the Mediterranean^ 



1 Linnseus, Spec. 986 (1753). — Reichenbach, Icon. Fl. Germ. Virginia, which seemed to offer particular advantages for this 



xii. t. 1327. — Seringa, Descr. et Cult. Mur. 191, Atlas, t. 1-18. 

 Bureau, De Candolle Prodr. xvii. 238. 



Fl, Orient, iv, 



1153. — Franchet, Nouv. Arch. Mas. s^r. 2, v. 270 {PI David. \.). 

 Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Sac. xxvi. 455. 



Moras Tataricay Linnaeus, /. c. (1763). — Pallas, Fl. Ross. i. feeding of 

 pt. ii. 9, t. 52. 



Morus Constantinopolitanay Poiret, Lam. Diet. iv. 381 (1797). 



industry (see a pamphlet published in London in 1655, entitled 



The Reformed Virginian Silk-Wormy or a rare and new Discocery of 

 a speedy ivag, and easie means, found out by a young Lady in Eng- 

 land y she having made full proof thereof in May anno 1652. 



Sil/c-worms in the Woods, on the Mulberry-tree leaves in 



Virginia [Force, Coll. Hist. Tracts, iii. No. 13]) ; and in Georgia, 



where every grant of Crown land was coupled with the condition 



For 



Nouveau Duhamel, iv. 92, t. 24. — Maximowicz, Prim. Fl. Amur. that one hundred White Mulberry-trees should be planted on each 



477. 



ten acres of grouiirl, (See an Account, shewing the Progress of the 



The wild Mulberry-tree with deeply lobed, irregularly shaped Colony of Georgia, in America, from its first establishment, ly'LondiOiiy 

 leaves and dark red or nearly black fruit, discovered by the French 1741 [Force, I. c. i. No. 5].) 



missionary David on the mountains of southern Mongolia, and 



The White Mulberry-tree flourishes in all the eastern United 



common in the mountainous regions of northern China, is believed States, and by its hardiness in the severe climate of New England 

 to be the original t}^e from which have sprung the numerous vari- 



shows its northern origin. In a description of the province of South 



eties of this tree which are now cultivated where sericulture is Carolina in 1731, a White Mulberry-tree seven or eight years old, 

 practiced (Julien, Resume des Principaux Traites Chinois sur la growing at Port Royal, is said to have had a trunk five feet in cir- 

 Culture des IMuriers. — Bretschneider, Jour. North-China Branch cumference, and several other trees only five years old with trunks 

 Royal Asiatic Soc. n. ser. xxv. 329 [^Botanicon Sinicumy ii.]) ; and a foot in diameter are described. (See Force, I. c. ii. No. 10.) Seri- 

 the White Mulberry in a form with less uniformly divided leaves culture, however, has never become an American industry, although 

 than those of the north China tree is certainly wild in the primeval various attempts to make it so have been tried in the United States 

 forests which cover the hills of central Yezo. by individuals or through bounties offered by the state govern- 

 No other tree furnishes employment, directly and indirectly, to ments. Climatic conditions favor the industry, but the high price 

 so large a number of the human race, or has been so carefidly of labor has made it unprofitable. Sixty years ago the hope of 

 studied from the cultural point of view ; and no other tree has establishing it in the United States caused the greatest horticultu- 

 given rise to such a voluminous literature. The cultivation of the ral speculation the country has known, and ruined thousands of 

 White Mulberry-tree in China to furnish food for the silk-worm people. In 1824 a French traveler brought to France under the 

 {Bombyx Moriy Linnaeus) is as old as the civilization of the Chinese name of Morus multicaulis (Perrottet, Ann. Soc. Linn, Paris, 1829, 

 race ; and there is a tradition printed in the first centur}^ before 129. — Seringe, I. c. 213, t. 18) a variety of the White Mulberry- 

 the Christian era that Siling, wife of the Emperor Huang Ti (b. c. tree which he had found in the Philippine Islands, where it had 

 2697), first instructed the people in the art of rearing silk-worms. been carried by a Portuguese priest toward the end of the sixteenth 

 Long and jealously guarded by the Chinese, the secret of the art century. The rapid growth of this tree, its large and succulent 

 of silk-making first reached Japan through Corea in the third cen- leaves, and the ease with which it could be multiplied, soon at- 

 tury of our era ; during the reign of the twenty-first Mikado (457- tracted the attention of European sericulturists ; and in 1827 it 

 479 A, D.) the planting of Mulberry-trees was encouraged, although was introduced into the United States through the Prince Nur- 

 it was not until the second half of the sixth century that sUk-cul- sery on Long Island. A year later it was carried to Massachusetts 

 ture became a great national industry in Japan (Rein, Industries of by 



William 



Japan, 188). The art of sericulture carried from China to India marvelous stories of its value spread from town to town and from 



was first established there in the valley of the Brahmaputra, and state to state. Nurserymen gave up all other business to propagate 



the earliest account of the silk-worm in European literature appears the South Sea novelty ; farmers covered their land with the trees, 



in Aristotle {Hist. Anim. v. 19 [17] ; 11 [6]), who may have derived and aU eastern America, converted into one great Mulberry plan- 



his scanty knowledge of it from the Greek soldiers who accompa- tation, was to become the rival of the Orient and of Europe in the 



nied Alexander to India. In the year 550 two Nestorian monks production of silk. Plants brought fabulous prices, and the north, 



carried eggs of the silk-worm from Khotan to the Court of Justin- the south, and the west struggled with each other to secure them in 



ian in Constantinople, and silk-culture, gradually established in the the auction rooms of eastern cities. But the reaction soon came ; 



Byzantine Empire, spread through southern Europe, although until the climate of the northern states was found to be too severe for 



the fourteenth century the Black and not the White Mulberry-tree this variety, and trees were killed by cold or by the diseases which 



was planted in the countries bordering the Mediterranean to sup- appeared among them ; and nurserymen and farmers were ruined. 



ply the silk- worm with food. (See Loudon, Arh. Brit. iii. 1348. 



In 1839 the bubble burst ; and of the millions that were planted 



Antonio Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici sulla Introduzione di varie hardly one tree now remains in any of the northern states. (See 

 Piante nelV Agricoltura ed Orticoltura Toscanay 188. — A. De Can- Kendrick, American Silk Growers' Guide, 26. — L. H. Bailey, Bull 



Hort. Div. Cornell Agric. Exper. Stat. No. 46 ; also numerous arti- 



) 



{Mi 



doUe, Origine des Plantes Cultivees, 119.) 



Early in the sixteenth century the Spaniards made an unsuccessful 

 attempt to establish sericulture in Mexico, and Mulberry-trees and 

 the eggs of the silk-worm were sent from Spain for the purpose ; was introduced by Russian Mennonites into the western states in 

 a century later James I. endeavored to introduce it into the Eng- 1875 ; although of comparatively little value as a fruit-tree, it is 

 lish colonies in North America, and, until the breaking out of the very hardy, and useful in forming wind-breaks on the prairies or 

 War of the Revolution, persistent efforts were made by the British as an ornamental hedge-plant, and several varieties, valued for 

 government to encourage the rearing of silk-worms, especially in their large fruit or pendulous branches, have been raised in this 



