236 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



wonderfully tenacious of life. It is tolerably hardy, 

 deciduous, and one of the last to come into leaf. 

 Afterwards it is remarkable for the density of the shade. 

 Capable of enduring the smoke of towns, it is a capital 

 tree for suburban gardens, and will thrive even in little 

 corners among warehouses. 



The fruit, quite familiar in the southern English 

 counties, more sparingly produced in the northern, is 

 distinguished for its sweet sub-acid taste, with a very 

 agreeable aroma superadded. It is excellent for dessert; 

 makes a very nice, though rather cloying preserve, and 

 supplies material for a pleasant light wine. The quantity 

 produced is often prodigious. Being apt to drop as soon 

 as ripe, and very tender in skin, the tree should always be 

 planted upon a lawn or other grassy surface, where the 

 damage received will be of the slightest. 



The native country of the mulberry is uncertain. But 

 that the original seat was south-western Asia is eminently 

 probable. At the present day it is found apparently wild 

 in the Caucasus, also in Persia and Asia Minor. Thence 

 it would be conveyed westwards at a very early period, 

 but there is no exact knowledge of the time or by what 

 means. No reference to it occurs in the Old Testament, 

 though mentioned in the New, under the Greek name of 

 " sycamine." (Luke xvii. 6.) The ancient secular Greek 

 writers speak of it both as the sycamine and the moron, 

 as Dioscorides, B.C. 25. With the Romans the latter 

 word became morus, the tree having reached Italy some 

 time prior to, though not very long before, the Christian 



