WILD SILK WORMS. ] 79 



We have called the pepper tree of China fngara, after P. 

 D'Incarville. It appears, in fact, to resemble it ; but we 

 doubt if it be of the same species. As that tree is of an 

 easy and very common culture in the province of Canton, 

 where our vessels resort, it would be easy to bring plants 

 to France ; for besides, the seed, seed-pods can be used in 

 place of pepper, which would be important for the king- 

 dom, and the silk worms of that tree are those which yield 

 the most beautiful and the greatest quantity of silk. Ac- 

 cording to M. Duhamel, the illustrious and zealous promo- 

 ter of the public good, who says of the fag ar a, it appears 

 to us very doubtful if those of China can succeed in thq 

 b- Northern provinces of France ; but we are persuaded that 

 it would succeed very well in Provence, Languedoc, and 

 Roussillon. An ignorant person sees nothing very impor- 

 tant to the country in the acquisition of a new tree; but a 

 statesman, a citizen, sees in a useful tree a lasting inheri- 

 tance for the whole nation. 



In China two kinds of the ash tree are distinguished, the 

 tchcou-tchun, and the kiang-tchun. The tcheou-tchun is 

 the same as ours, and it is on that the wild silk worms are 

 fed. The kiang-tchun is very different from the first by its 

 blossom, its seed, and above all, by its smell, as will be 

 seen by the notice we have taken of it. Our moderns are, 

 perhaps, too ready to laugh at what Pliny, the natura- 

 list, has said of the ash tree , we would not be at all sur- 

 prised that the kiang-tchun fully justified him. The compass 

 of Europe is not yet large enough to measure the universe. 

 What quantities of plants and trees are in the world ! 

 Those of China, which are immense, will not, perhaps, be 

 known in the West for many centuries. 

 The oak, on which a kind of wild worms are fed, if we 



