Vol. X. 



AND HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



61 



lianging, peck at and pierce tliem, and ilevom- tlie 

 useful little animals. 



Tliese worms begin their work at nine o'clock 

 «t iiiglil ; then lliey come out of tljeir l)a^'s and 

 tei^iii to feed ; in tlieir passage they draw long 

 ffllk threads, which serve thcni as guides to return 

 to their cocoons ; thus they make to themselves 

 silken roads or bridges, the threads of which are 

 of an exlraordiiiary strength. 



By Mr Icaza, now in this city, I shall semi yon 

 a coeooi] bag of the material above mentioned, 

 and if the Board desire it, I shall send them as 

 many ns they may think proper. 



God and Liberty — Jalapa, Jan. 6th, 1S31. 



ToMAS Illaives. 



NEW CHINESE MULBERRY. 

 Moms MulticauHs. 

 This newly introduced variety of mulberry for 

 feeding silkworms is undoubtedly an important 

 acquisition, and more particularly so to this country 

 where silk is on the eve of becoming a staple article 

 of production. The Editor of the American Far- 

 mer has had this variety under eidtivation for two 

 years, and has made himself acquainted with its 

 peculiarities both as to quality and the manner of 

 cultivating it. Not having a sufficient quantity fur 

 a full trial of feeding silkworms with it, he has been 

 obliged to confine his experiments to occasional 

 feedings, at which times the worms promptly left 

 the Ilalian white mulberry leaf and devoured the 

 new Chinese with avidity. The leaves of the new 

 mulberry frequently measure a foot in length and 

 ten inches in width. Indeed Mrs Parmenticr, the 

 lady of the late Andrew Parmenlier of the Brook- 

 lyn nursery and garden, who has 1600 of the trees 

 for sale, in a letter to the Editor says, that some of 

 the leaves on the trees in tliat establishment mea- 

 sure 13 inches in length, and that the W(U-ms left 

 six diflerent kinds of mulberry to feed on them. 

 Although the number of leaves on the tree is not 

 so great as that of those on the white, we sboidd 

 judge that the weight of the leaf was nuich greater 



" it is so great in fact that during a rain or after 



a heavy dew, the young trees are bent almost to 

 the ground by the weight of their foliage. This 

 mulberry bears no fruit, or rather it is. "so iiunnte 

 and so small in quantity that the propagation of it 

 from seed is never practised. But like all oilier 

 vegetables of difficult propagation by seed, it is 

 remarkably easy of reproduction by other means. 

 By laying down the young trees, covering llieni 

 with earth, and leaving the ends of the branches 

 out, every branch will take root and become a 

 young tree in two or three weeks — so that every 

 tree one year old will by proper management pro- 

 duce from ten to twenty in one summer. We hiiil 

 do\vn a tree on Friday, 29th July, and a part of 

 the stock near the root containing no branches, was 

 left out of ground. On the Friday following two 

 buds were seen shooting from the naked stock, and 

 earth was then covered over the stock and around 

 the buds. The young trees from these buds now 

 measure 2 feet 6 inches high. This fact v/ill serve 

 to illustrate the great facility of propagating the 

 morus multicaulis by layers. As this tuulberry does 

 not grow high, the leaves can always be gathered 

 by hand from the ground without the aid ofladders 

 or the danger attending the climbing of large trees. 

 They can he planted pretty close together, and we 

 Bhoulil judge that an acre of ground would produce 

 more foliage with this than with the white mul- 

 berry. The morus multicaulis being as yet quite 



scarce in this country, they sell high; but every 

 one who contemplates cultivating silk should ob- 

 tain a few, and by laying them down in July, niiil- 

 tii)lytliem. By this means ten trees obtained Ihisfall, 

 would, iei five years, produce one million of trees, 

 allowing each one to produce ten every year, which 

 we are convinced they will certainly do ; tliat is, in 

 the fall of 1S32 there would be 100 ; 1833, 1000, 

 in 1834,10,000 ;in 1835, 100,000 ; in 1830, 1,000,- 

 000 — and these we have no hesitation in saying 

 would produce ten times as much foliase as could he 

 produced with the same expense and labor in the 

 same time, of the white mulberry or any other kind. 

 We hope editors in the country will give free circu- 

 lation to 'hese facts, that the cultivators of silk, and 

 those who contemplate entering upon that business, 

 may avail of the advantages of this mulberry in 

 commencing their orchards. The morus multicaulis 

 can be obtained of Wm. Prince & Sons, at the Lin- 

 nrean Botanic garden at Flushing, New York, of 

 Mrs Parrnentior, at the Horticultural Botanic Gar- 

 den at Brooklyn, N. Y. of the Editor of the 

 American Farmer, and of the New England Far- 

 mer, Boston. They are generally sold at one dol- 

 lar each. — American Farmer. 



A letter from Commodore Porter to Mr Skinner 

 ofPiallimore says — I shall try and send you a very 

 simple mode of cultivating the silk worm, prepar- 

 ing the silk, and adapted, in the most simple form, 

 to tlie use of families. I shall get it from a poor 

 plain Mahonese woman, who, for her amusement, 

 raises the worm, separates the silk from the cocoon, 

 spins and manufactures, and sells it. She showeil 

 me several pounds of excellent sewing silk, of the 

 remains of what she bad last year. I shall send 

 you a sample. You will he surprised at the sim- 

 pliciiy of all the means of obtaining silk, and of 

 the little trouble attending it. 



The cultivation of silk is not as tmnhlesomR as 

 the cultivation of flax, and infinitely more certain 

 and profitable. The simple mode, which I hope 

 to be able to descriiie, will, I expect, induce our 

 good housewives to give some attention to the sub- 

 ject, and, by a gradual introduction of its culture 

 ,imong us, save, in the end, millions of moneys 

 which finds it way to this side of the Atlantic. 

 For silk is an indispensable article, and is one of 

 the first necessity ; as much so as tea and sugar. 

 No man or woman can put on a coat, shawl, hat 

 glove, or dress himself, or herself, in any way, 

 without it. 



'THE MORTGAGED FARMS IN NEW ENG- 

 LAND.' 



We intended to accompany the article under 

 this head in our last, with some remarks; and 

 even now, they seeip necessary to satisfy the de- 

 mand of justice. In the first place, the evil, 

 though of 110 trifling magnitude, is by no means 

 so universal as the writer supposes, — at least, in 

 this region ; and we believe it is, and for .some 

 time has been, diminishing. Farmers are getting 

 out of debt. They are paying offtbeir mortgages, 

 cither from the produce of iheir farms, or by the 

 sale of them, generally, to fnrmers who will man- 

 age them independently. Then, too, the alleged 

 cause of the evil, the unprofitableness of farmers' 

 daughters, is overrated. We know but few fam- 

 ilies where they spend their lime in such idleness 

 as the writer supposes. Again, he is wrong when 

 he supposes that their ' going out to service' would 

 mend the matter to any great extent. A writer 



in the N. E. Farmer has some very good remarks 

 on this subject; but he has not touched some of its 

 most important points. The very phrase ' going 

 out to service' is very unacceptable toour farmers, 

 and their daughters too, and we hope it always 

 will he ; not because there is anything so bad in 

 the words themselves, but because the aristocracy 

 of England have given them a technical meaning, 

 which clings to them even here, expressive of 

 distinction in rank, of superiority and inferiority, 

 in a word, of degradation in those to whom it is 

 applied. Many a farmer's daughter labors wiU 

 liiigly at moderate wages, in the kitchen too, if 

 need be, in families like her own, where she is re- 

 garded as an equal, who could not he induced, at 

 any price, to do house-work in a fainily where she 

 must be regarded as an inferior : for she will not, 

 for money, give up her habitual, every day con- 

 sciousness that ' all men,' and women too, ' are 

 horn free and equal,' and that neither her parents 

 nor herself have forfeited that birthright. And 

 when this spirit is gone, our republican institutions 

 will have become inappropriate, and ought to give 

 place, and soon will give place, to a form of gov- 

 ernment jnore in keeping with the spirit of the 

 people. Let our ' gentry' have as little inter- 

 course as they please with those by whose labor 

 they live, but let that intercourse be such as im- 

 jiliea no degradation in either party, and they will 

 hud no difiicuhy in purchasing the labor of intel- 

 ligent and virtuous young women, who will feel 

 solf-res[)cct enough to mind their own business. 



The writer in the N. E. Fanner says that the 

 evil complained of arises from the accumulation of 

 property in a few hands. But whence does this 

 arise ? IIow does property get out of the hands 

 of the farmer or mechanic, into the hands of the 

 merchant, for instance ? Evidently, by the farmer's 

 buying more than his income can pay fiir. It is 

 the desire to keep u|) an ecpiality of outward show, 

 by running into all the expensive follies of the 

 foolish rich, that does more tlian all things else to 

 mortgage farms. Whether all the aforesaid daugh- 

 ters are as guiltless on this point as on the other, 

 we shall not attempt to decide. — Windsor, Vt. 

 Chronicle. 



From the American Farmer. 



ARACACHA AND QUINOA. 



The importance of the introduction of these 

 new and valuable vegetables, will he deemed a 

 suflicient excuse for the frequent mention of their 

 progress, in the Farmer. Thearacacha continues 

 to thrive most luxuriantly, and at present is one 

 of the most flouishiug vegetables in the Editor's 

 grounds. It has withstood all the varieties and 

 excesses of the season without detriment, and is 

 not surpassed in hardiness, so far, by any other 

 vegetable. The root is growing and the offsets 

 for another year's planting are forming in great 

 numbers. The prospect is, that it can be cultiva- 

 ted with much more facility in this climate than 

 the sweet potato. 



The (^uinoa, or Peruvian rice, is just out of 

 flower, and is thickly set with seed, so that unless 

 some unforeseen injurious effect of the remain- 

 der of the season should occur, the prospect \a 

 very fair that it will be perfectly adapted to our 

 climate and become an important addition to our 

 grains. We shall take care to advise our read- 

 ers of the result of this experiment, whatever, it 

 may be. 



