308 Singular Leaves of the Mulberry. 
and on learning there was a Mulberry Tree in my crarden, I ran to see it 
with more eagerness than any otlier object in my little domain. 
But, Gentlemen, I found my tree a poor, deformed and stunted invalid ; 
full of canker, dead branches, and everything unhealthy. I learnt that the 
Jady who had planted it, being pleased to see her grand-children seated 
beneath it, had ordered a mound of earth to be piled round it, half-way 
up the stem, and this being covered with turf, and necessarily excluding 
all nourishment from the elements to the roots, had produced, as I ima- 
gine, the effects I describe. I looked at my Mulberry Tree, almost in 
despair ; but taking courage, f set to work with it immediately. — I re- 
moved the bank from the stem, and clearing away the mould quite down 
to the roots, supplied its place with several barrowfuUs of rotten dung. 
I cut out all the dead branches and most cankered places, and then scoured 
every part of it well with a brush and strong soap-suds. In addition to 
this, every washing-day, I had several pails of soap-suds poured round 
the bottom of the stem, so as to reach all the roots. My tree, in the 
spring, looked much the better for my care; the buds showed well, but 
all the fruit was destroyed by that cruel night of the 6th of May, which, 
I think, will be strongly marked hi every gardener's journal of this year. 
With summer, however, it revived, but bore no fruit. 
I now come to the cause of my addressing ycfti. The new shoots it 
made, are the most extraordinary in size, length, and healthiness of ap- 
pearance, I ever saw a tree make ; but strange to tell, while the leaves 
of the old part of the tree were the regular Mulberry leaf, [fig. 39] all 
39 
