MULBERRY. 89 



cultivation of such as are best adapted to silkworms, which 

 are sold at moderate prices. 



In Fiance, the white Mulberry is grown as pollard Elms 

 are in England. In Lombardy, it is grown in low, marshy 

 ground. In China, it is also grown in moist, loamy soil, 

 and both there and in the East Indies, as low bushes, and 

 the plantations rooted up and renewed every three or four 

 years. In many parts, when the leaves are wanted for the 

 worms, they are stripped off the young shoots, which are 

 left naked on the tree ; in other places, the shoots are cut 

 off, which is not so injurious to the tree, while the points oi 

 the shoots, as well as the leaves, are eaten by the worms. 



The plants are sometimes raised from seed, and one ounce 

 of seed will produce five thousand trees, if sown in nch 

 loamy soil in the latter end of April, or early in May ; but 

 the young plants will require protection the first winter ; they 

 are more commonly propagated by layers and cuttings, put 

 down in the spring. The Italian variety is frequently grafted 

 on seedling stocks of the common sort, in order to preserve 

 it from degenerating. In the East Indies, the plants are 

 raised from cuttings, three or four of which are placed 

 together where they are finally to remain. 



But Mulberry trees are valuable for their fruit ; and in 

 England the black and red kinds are in great esteem, and 

 much cultivated. The fruit of the white Mulberry is white, 

 and less acid than that of the black species. The black is 

 naturally a stronger tree than the other; the fruit is of a 

 dark, blackish red, and of an agreeable aromatic and acid 

 flavour. The red Mulberry has black shoots, rougher leaves 

 than the black Mulberry, and a dark, reddish fruit, longer 

 than the common sort, and of a very pleasant taste. The 

 fruit of the yellow Mulberry is very sweet and wholesome, 

 but not much eaten, excepting by birds ; the timber, how- 

 ever, is valuable, from its abounding in a slightly glutinous 

 milk of a sulphurous colour, and is known in Europe under 

 the name of fustic wood, for dying a yellow colour. 



8* 



