272 THE NURSERY. 



eastern world ; and a substitute for it, has not yet been discovered 

 in America. 



It has a strong woody stem divided into many irregular branches* 

 and rises to the height of eight or ten feet, or more ; the bark is 

 hairy, and of an herbaceous brown colour while young. The leaves 

 are composed of seven or eight pair of leaflets, terminated by an 

 odd one : these leaflets are about two inches long, and half an inch 

 wide in the middle, and are of a yellowish green colour. The flowers 

 grow in loose panicles at the ends of the branches, each panicle be- 

 ing composed of several thick spikes of flowers, sitting close to the 

 footstalks : they are of a whitish herbaceous colour, and appear in 

 June and July, and are followed by numerous roundish compressed 

 seeds. 



It may easily be propagated by seed, which, if sown soon after 

 being ripe, or preserved in sand or earth till spring, will grow free- 

 ly the first year ; but if kept dry till spring, they do not generally 

 Vegetate till the next season. It can also be propagated by suckers^ 

 which it produces pretty freely, or by layers. It is tolerable hardy j 

 and will thrive in warm exposures in the middle states. 



Mulberry -Trees and Silk-Worms. 



The Morus alba, or white mulberry, is a native of China, Co- 

 chinchina and Japan, and according to Gmelin, of Persia. It 

 grows well in the United States, and may be cultivated to great 

 advantage for the feeding of silk worms, as well here as in France, 

 Spain, or Italy. In Spain, Mr. Townsend informs us, that in the 

 province of Valentia, they prefer the white mulberry ; but in that 

 cf Granada, they give a preference to the black. The Persians 

 generally make use of the latter, and it has been asserted upon very 

 good authority, that worms fed with the black mulberry, produce 

 much better silk, than those fed with the white. But the leaves of 

 the black, should never be given to the worms after they have eaten 

 for sometime of the white, lest they should burst. 



Sir George Staunton, in his embassy to China, says, that the trees 

 he observed in that country, did not appear to differ from the com- 

 mon mulberry trees of Europe ; that some of them were said to bear 

 white, and some red or black fruit, but that often they bore none ; 

 and that the tender leaves growing on young shoots of the black 

 mulberry, are supposed to be the most succulent. 



About the year of Christ 551, two Persian monks, employed as* 

 missionaries in some of the Christian churches established in Indiaj 

 penetrated into the country of Seres, or China. There they ob* 

 served the labours of the silk-worm, and became acquainted with 

 the art of working up its productions into a variety of elegant fa- 

 brics. They explained to the Greek emperor at Constantinople 

 these mysteries, hitherto unknown, or very imperfectly understood 

 in Europe ; and undertook to bring to the capital a sufficient number 

 of those wonderful insects. This they accomplished, by conveying 

 the eggs of the silk-worm, in a hollow cane. They were hatched, 

 and afterwards fed with the leaves of a wild Mulberry-tree, and mul 



