54 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 
and in waste places clumps of the same species growing half wild. 
The beds and borders are gay with hosts of common blossoms, 
and as for the roses, they are so abundant that notwithstanding 
their beauty, they run some risk of being overlooked and their pre- 
sence considered a matter of course. Everywhere the China tree 
is displaying its drooping racemes of lilac-tinted flowers, while 
the magnolia, casting off its two downy sepals as the blood- 
root does, is unfolding the first of its great white blossoms, like a 
clean page upon which to write the history of the early summer, 
whose arrival its blooming portends. 
USES OF THE PAPER :\IULBERRY. 
The paper mulberry is usually cultivated for ornament in the 
United States, but in other lands its usefulness is its chief recom- 
mendation. The tree is called Moms papyrifcra, or Broussonetia 
papyrifcra, and is closely allied to the common mulberry. It 
grows wild in China and Japan and also in many of the islands of 
the Pacific ocean, where the natives manufacture a large part of 
their clothing from its bark. The most important use of the 
bark, however, is in making the peculiar whitey-brown Japanese 
paper with which most Americans are more or less familiar. The 
manufacture of the paper and some of the uses to which it is put, 
are thus described in Indian Gardening and Planting : 
A mulberry plantation resembles very much a grove of our wil- 
low trees, the mulberr}- having a very short thick stem with many 
branches. In Xovember, when all the important products, such 
as tea. rice, beans, etc., have been harvested, the Japanese farmer 
finds time to cut the branches of the mulberry tree. The first op- 
eration is to boil these branches in a weak wood ash bath in order 
to loosen the outer layer of bark. After the latter is removed, the 
bast is peeled off and thoroughly washed by suspending it in the 
river. The bast is then dried and sold to the papermaker. In our 
paper mills the pulp is prepared by grinding almost any fibrous 
material in the beating machine until sufficiently fine, whereby it 
cannot be avoided that the fibres are cut short. The Japanese, on 
the contrary, are very particular about treating the mulberry bast 
