RESOURCES OF AMERICA, SILK, ETC. 415 



lated for other profitable cultivation. Land half covered with rocks 

 may be profitably covered with mulberry trees, which will here find 

 ample moisture, and nourishment, and warmth, from the direct and 

 reflected rays of the sun. 



By cultivating the mulberry tree in hedge-rows^ the ground will t 

 in a short space of time, produce double the amount of food which 

 can be obtained in any other way. And an equal amount of leaves 

 may be gathered from the trees in hedge-rows, at less than one half 

 the labor and expense which would be required from standard trees. 

 It is thus that the mulberry is cultivated in China ; in autumn their 

 hedges are annually cut down to near the surface of the ground, for 

 the production of a new and more luxuriant crop of leaves in the 

 ensuing season. 



In Persia, as we are informed, the trees are kept low, and not suf- 

 fered to rise over six or eight feet in height. Broussa, a city of 

 Turkey, at the foot of Mount Olympus, is famous for its silk, and is 

 surrounded by mulberry plantations. The trees, says Commodore 

 Porter, are planted in rows, not more than two or three feet apart, 

 and kept pruned low for use, in the season for gathering the leaves 

 so that a mart may reach the top. At other places in this great silk 

 district, the same system is pursued. In stripping the leaves, those 

 at the tip ends of the twigs are always left. But, in hot countries, 

 the silk-worms are fed wholly on pruning.*, as the leaves thus for a 

 longer time preserve their needful freshness and moisture. 



John P. Gushing, Esq., of Belmont, in Watertown, a gentleman 

 who has resided many years in China, has stated that the most ap- 

 proved mode of cultivating the mulberry, as practised in that coun- 

 try, consists in keeping them low by annual prunings, like plantations 

 of raspberries. The same mode is also practised in India. This 

 system of close planting and low pruning is in perfect conformity 

 with the highly-approved mode of management which is now so 

 extensively adopted with the grape vine, in vineyard culture, i 

 modern France. 



During her residence at Broussa, Miss Pardoe visited the estab 

 lishments of the silk-worms, and made very particular inquiry as to 

 the mode of feeding and management. The silk-worms, as she 

 states, are fed indiscriminately with branches of the red and the 

 white mulberry, the last being preferred. The branches are strewed 

 on the floor, and the silk-worms are never touched with the hand ; 

 the withered mass being never removed, and when ready to spin, oak 

 boughs, about four feet high, are planted in the mass, like a minia- 

 ture forest, and in their leaves the silk-worms form their cocoons. 

 Every crevice of the apartment is carefully closed to exclude the 

 admission of air, and a fire of " charcoal ashes " is constantly kept 

 up throughout both day and night. Meanwhile, as she states, it ap- 

 pears certain that this mode of feeding and of management greatly 

 increases the quantity of silk, and diminishes the labor of the feeders. 

 This is the mode of feeding the silk-worms which produce, in the 

 neighborhood of Broussa, an extraordinary quantity of silk. There 

 is scarcely a house in the neighborhood of Broussa which does not 

 contain several apartments filled with silk-worms, whose produce is 

 disposed of to the spinners, of which there are a considerable num- 

 ber in the city. 



In one day, and of those only which entered at one single gate of 



