280 '^H^ 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 mulberryj 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 very 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 
