280 '*HE NURSERY. ^March. 
eastern world; and a substitute for it, has not yet been discovered in 
America. 
It has a strong woody stem divided into many irregular branches, 
and rises to the height of eight or ten feet, or more; the bark is 
hairy, and of an herbaceous brown colour while young. The leaves 
are composed of seven or eight pair of leaflets; terminated by an 
odd one: these leaflets are about two inches long, and half an inch 
wide in the middle, and are of a yellowish green colour. The flowers 
grow in loose panicles at the ends of the branches, each panicle be- 
ing composed of several thick spikes of flowers, sitting close to the 
foot-stalks: they are of a whitish herbaceous colour, and appear in 
June and July, and are followed by numerous roundish compressed 
seeds. 
It may easily be propagated by seed, which, if sown soon after 
being ripe, or preserved in sand or earth till spring, will grow freely 
the first year; but if kept dry till spring, they do not generally vege- 
tate till the next season. It can also be propagated by suckers, which 
it produces pretty freely, or by layers. It is tolerably hardy, and will 
thrive in warm exposures in the middle states. 
Mulberry -Trees and Silk- Worms. 
The Morus alba, or white mulberry, is a native of China, Cochin- 
china and Japan, and according to Gmelin, of Persia. It grows well 
in the United States, and may be cultivated to great advantage 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 Valen- 
tia, they prefer the white mulberry; but in that of Granada, 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 lime 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 com- 
mon 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. There they ob- 
served the labours of the silk-worm, and became acquainted with 
the art of working up its productions into a variety of elegant fa- 
brics. 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 number 
of those wonderful insects. This they accomplished, by conveying 
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 mul- 
