280 THE NURSERY. [March. 



well in the United States, and may be cultivated to great advan- 

 tage for the feeding of silk worms, as well here as in France, 

 Spain, or Italy. In Spain, Mr. Townsend informs us that in the 

 province of Valencia they prefer the white mulberry; but in that 

 of Grenada they give a preference to the black. The Persians 

 generally make use of the latter; and it has been asserted upon 

 very good authority, that worms fed with the black mulberry 

 produce much better silk than those fed with the white. But the 

 leaves of the black should never be given to the worms after they 

 have eaten for some time of the white, lest they should burst. 



Sir George Staunton, in his embassy to China, says that the 

 trees he observed in that country did not appear to differ from the 

 common mulberry trees of Europe; that some of them were said to 

 bear white, and some red or black fruit, but that often they bore 

 none; and that the tender leaves growing on young shoots of the 

 black mulberry are supposed to be the most succulent. 



About the year of Christ, 551, two Persian monks, employed as 

 missionaries in some of the Christian churches established in India, 

 penetrated into the country of Seres, or China. They there ob- 

 served the labours of the silk worm, and became acquainted with 

 the art of working up its productions into a variety of elegant 

 fabrics. They explained to the Greek emperor at Constantinople 

 these mysteries, hitherto unknown, or very imperfectly understood 

 in Europe; and undertook to bring to the capital a sufficient num- 

 ber of those wonderful insects. This they accomplished by con- 

 veying the eggs of the silk worm in a hollow cane. They were 

 hatched, and afterwards fed with the leaves of a wild mulberry 

 tree, and multiplied and worked in the same manner as in those 

 climates where they first became the objects of human attention 

 and care. Vast numbers of these insects were soon reared in dif- 

 ferents parts of Greece, particularly in the Peloponnesus. Sicily 

 afterwards undertook to breed silk worms with equal success, and 

 was imitated, from time to time, in several towns of Italy. In all 

 these places extensive manufactures were established with silk of 

 domestic production. 



From the reign of Justinian, it was mostly in Greece, and some of 

 the adjacent islands that silk worms were reared. Soon after the 

 conquest of Constantinople by the Venetians, in the year 1204, they 

 attempted the establishment of the silk manufacture in their domi- 

 nions; and in a short time the silk fabrics of Venice vied with those 

 of Greece and Sicily. 



About the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Florentine 

 manufactures of silk became verv considerable. It was introduced 

 much later into France; the manufacture of silk, though consider- 

 ably encouraged by Henry IV. not having been fully established 

 there till under Louis XIV. by Colbert. 



*'It is an established and well known fact that both the white and 

 black mulberry trees grow as well in almost every part of the 

 United States, as in any country on earth; and also that silk has 

 been raised and manufactured into a most excellent fabric, under 

 the direction of that great and venerable patriot, and friend of 



