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they wove the fanciful legend of Pyramus and Thisbe, 

 more familiar perhaps to many from the burlesque of 

 Bottom than from the pathetic original of Ovid, who in 

 sad seriousness celebrates how, when the lover deemed 

 his lady slain, he threw himself upon his own sword, when 

 she, returning only to find him dying, slew herself also, 

 and this Borneo and Juliet of the ancient world thus ex- 

 pired together at the foot of the mulberry-tree where they 

 had been accustomed to meet, crimsoning its roots with a 

 sanguine stream, till 



"The berries, stained with blood, began to show 

 A dark complexion, and forgot their snow, 

 While, fattened with a flowing gore, the root 

 Was doomed for ever to a purple fruit. 

 The prayer which dying Thisbe had preferred 

 Both gods and parents with compassion heard : 

 The mulberry found its former whiteness fled, 

 And rip'ning, saddened in a dusky red." 



A native of China ; of Syria, where in very early times 

 we find David smiting the Philistines under the mulberry- 

 trees ; and of Persia, this tree is supposed to have been 

 brought from the latter country into Greece and Eome, 

 where it was more esteemed than almost any other fruit, 

 even in the Romans' most luxurious times. Spreading 

 thence to other parts of Europe, it is believed to have been 

 brought to England by the monks, arriving in 1548, and 

 is said to have been first planted in the gardens of Sion 

 House, where very recently the original trees were still 

 living, much decayed, but still bearing luxuriant leaves 

 and fruit. ' A great impetus was given to the culture of 

 the mulberry in England at the beginning of the 17th 

 century, in consequence of James I. having conceived the 

 idea that we might become a silk-growing nation, and, in 

 consequence, doing all in his power to encourage the 

 planting of this tree, not only expending his eloquence in 

 exhorting his subjects to give their attention to it, but 

 even offering packets of the seed to any who might choose 

 to apply for them. This seems, however, to have been 

 but a temporary crotchet of the royal brain, which, though 

 exciting much enthusiasm during 1605, was in the course 

 of a few years quite forgotten ; but while it lasted it had 



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