32 FAMILIAR TREES 



said in Turner's "Anglo-Saxons" to have been a 

 favourite compound of honey, was flavoured not 

 with Mulberries but with Blackberries. 



In his '' Names of Herbes," in 1548, Turner 

 says: — "Morus is called in greeke morea, in englishe 

 a mulbery tree, in duch maulberbaum, in french 

 murier, it groweth in diverse gardines in Englande." 



In 1596 Gerard had both species growing in his 

 Holborn garden, and in 1609 James I., emulating 

 the example of Henry lY. of France, did his best 

 by precept and example, and the distribution of 

 seed and young trees, to spread the cultivation of 

 the Mulberry and the rearing of the silkworm in 

 England. But, though there is a large and un- 

 doubtedly ancient White Mulberry at Syon House, 

 these seventeenth-century trees, the presence of 

 which on a lawn has been said to be a patent 

 of nobility to any garden, are almost all Black 

 Mulberries, The courtly playwright William 

 Shakespere, who had in Goriolanus shown his 

 familiarity with the fruit " that will not bear 

 the handling," responded to the royal suggestion 

 and planted at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, the 

 tree which Mr, Gastrell cut down when he de- 

 stroyed the house in 1756. Two trees raised from 

 this were planted by Garrick at his villa at 

 Hampton, when, as Cowper says : — 



" The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths ; 

 The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance ; 

 The raulberjy-tree was hymn'd with dulcet airs ; 

 And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree 

 Supplied such relics as devotion holds 

 Still sacred." 



