238 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



tines, and smote them " over against the mulberry-trees." 

 Again, in the Psalms we read, " He destroyed their vines 

 with hailstones, and their mulberry-trees with frost." 



This fruit was first brought from Persia into Greece and 

 Rome, and was more esteemed by the Romans, even in 

 their most luxurious days, than any other fruit. 



Ovid has celebrated this tree in his story of Pyramus 

 and Thisbe : 



" The berries, stain'd with blood, began to shew 

 A dark complexion, and forget their snow ; 

 While, fatten'd with a flowing gore, the root 

 Was doom'd for ever to a purple fruit. 

 The pray'r which, dying, Thisbe had preferr'd, 

 Both gods and parents with compassion heard : 

 The whiteness of the mulberry soon fled, 

 And, ripening, sadden'd in a dusky red." 



Pliny observes (book xv. c. 24), that " there is no other 

 tree that was so neglected by the wit of man, either by 

 grafting, or in giving it names, except that of making the 

 fruit large and fair." " At Rome," he continues, " we 

 make a difference between the mulberries of Ostia and 

 those of Tusculum." This author observes, in his xvith 

 book, c. 25, that " of all the cultivated trees, the mulberry 

 is the last that buds, and which it never does until the 

 cold weather is past ; and was therefore called the wisest 

 of all trees : but when it begins to put forth buds, it dis- 

 patches the business in one night, and that with so much 

 force, that their breaking forth may be evidently heard." 



Martyn tells us in his edition of Miller, that the silk- 

 worm was unknown to Theophrastus and Pliny ; but this 

 able compiler must have overlooked the 22d chapter of 

 the llth book of the world's greatest naturalist, where 

 Pliny says, " The silkworm in Assyria is called Bombyx, 

 when a fly ; it afterwards grows to a Bombylius, and then to 



