206 ON THE CULTIVATION OF 



The facility and rapidity with which young leaves 

 may by this means be produced is evident ; for you 

 can fill as many rows of trenches in this way as are 

 required, and it can never be necessary to have 

 mulberry trees higher than our raspberry, currant, or 

 gooseberry bushes. Whenever they get beyond that 

 height they lose their value ; and if these branches 

 succeed, you may have a supply coming fresh up day 

 after day, or any quantity you please." 



In climates of a similar temperature with that of 

 Great Britain, seedlings will seldom reach above 

 three inches in height during the first year. It is 

 different, however, in eastern countries where these 

 seedlings are mounded, in the succeeding, for feeding 

 the Silk Worms ; and a second crop is in like manner 

 cut for the food to a second brood of caterpillars. 

 Those experienced in the culture of Silk Worms can 

 readily recognize the silk produced by caterpillars 

 fed on these young shoots, from the superiority of its 

 texture. Those fed on the leaves of the mature 

 mulberry always produce an inferior quality of silk. 



The most simple and speedy method of producing 

 mulberry plants, is from cuttings ; they are always 

 more rapid in their growth, and stronger. But this 

 is most successfully practised in moist climates. 



The Chinese never allow mulberry trees to grow 

 above the height to which a man can reach. They 

 carefully cut out the main central stem, and allow 

 the side branches to expand in all directions, taking 

 care to prune them when they shew signs of growing 

 high. Besides, they always cut the centre of the 

 tree into a hollow cylinder, into which the person 



