40 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



seventeenth century and for a long time previous to the war of the 

 Revolution under encouragement by the British government. It 

 is now found naturalized in localities throughout the eastern United 

 States generally. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood of the White Mulberry is 

 quite hard, heavy and durable, with annual rings of growth marked 

 with many rather small open ducts, and it is of a yellowish brown 

 or markedly yellow color with scant nearly white sap-wood. Specific 

 Gravity, 0.71. 



USES. Little use is made of the wood of this species in this 

 country, though it is said to be used in India for boat-building, 

 furniture and agricultural implements uses for which other woods 

 in this country are considered more suitable. 



The chief value of the tree lies in its leaves, upon which the silk 

 worm mainly feeds and, hence, upon it the vast silk industry mainly 

 depends. The price of the necessary hand labor in silk production, 

 however, will doubtless always prevent its being an extensive industry 

 in America. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. Mulberries are refreshing and laxative, 

 and serve to prepare a grateful drink well adapted to febrile cases. A 

 syrup is made from their juice and used as an agreeable addition to 

 gargles in inflammation of the throat. The fruit of this species, 

 however, is sweeter and less grateful than the fruit of the M. nigra 

 and our native M. rubra.* 



GENUS TOXYLON, RAFIXESQUE. 



Leaves involute in the bud, broad-ovate to oblong and oblong-lanceolate, 

 rounded, obtuse or subcordate at base, acuminate, entire, pinnately veined, the 

 veins arcuate and united near the margin, whitish tomentose at first but finally 

 lustrous dark green above, duller and conspicuously reticulate-veined beneath, 

 turning bright yellow in autumn; petioles rather long, terete; stipules triangular, 

 small, caducous; branchlets armed with sharp axillary spines. Flowers in late 

 spring after the unfolding of the leaves, dioecious, light green; the staminate in 

 long-pedunculate subglobose heads from the axils of crowded leaves on short 

 lateral spurs; pedicels slender; calyx 4-lobed to the middle, stamens 4, opposite 

 the calyx lobes, incurved in the bud and elastically straightening and becoming 

 exserted; anthers 2-celled; pistillate flowers in dense globose heads, sessile or 

 with short peduncles in the axils of the leaves on the shoots of the year; calyx 

 divided to the base with thick concave persistent lobes closely investing the ovary, 

 the two outer lobes the largest; ovary ovoid, compressed, tipped with a long 

 filiform style and containing a single anatropous suspended ovule. Fruit a glo- 

 bose yellowish green aggregation of elongated drupelets, each consisting of a nutlet 

 enveloped by the enlarged fleshy calyx, the tips of .the lobes of which form the 

 roughened surface of the fruit. 



A genus of a single American species. A tree with deeply furrowed orange- 

 brown bark and slightly acrid milky juice. 



The name is from Greek words meaning bow and wood. 



* V. 8. Dispensatory, 16th ed., p. 986. 



