431 
Another part of the Pomeranian seed was sown next spring at my then 
living father’s estate, where I now live, in Livonia, about eighty-five Eng¬ 
lish miles north of Riga. The frosts took always half of the year’s growth. 
They were planted in a couple of borders, and kept under the sheers, then 
much in use, as formerly in England. No use was made of the leaves. 
When I retired from public life, I found no more than forty-five trees, or 
rather bushes, standing in one row, two feet asunder; I transplanted every 
second or third tree, by which I lost three trees: I made sucklings, and 
have more than a hundred low standard trees by them; cuttings I never 
attempted, misled by a German author, who assured me they would not take. 
I wrote for some seeds from Berlin, of the White Mulberry, of which I 
had many thousand plants: being no botanist, I am not sure they are of 
the White, though they have leaves much more smooth and tender than 
my old trees. 
The seedlings rose a foot in the first year, but froze to the ground; the 
next they rose to two feet, of which more than a foot was lost by the next 
winter; so they did the third year: then I transplanted them, partly in 
rows in beds, one foot asunder, others in sundry places of light middling 
land. I gave many hundreds to several ladies, who, hearing of my Silk¬ 
worms, were curious to have the plants. A lady near the town of Dorpat, 
near a hundred miles to the north-east, reared already a couple of thousand 
Silkworms, and has a shawl embroidered with her own silk of natural 
colours. Those planted in rows and beds were, after two years, planted for 
good, in different places, even in the field; of these, having no shelter, 
some have suffered more than those which were protected by buildings or 
other trees. 
I made no use of my Mulberry-leaves, till five yeare ago. Travelling 
in White Russia, or to be more explicit, in the Government of Polotzk, on 
the borders of the River Duna, about one hundred and fifty miles to the east 
of Riga, consequently somewhat colder, I found some ladies ruffling co¬ 
coons, having, as they said, no spinning-wheel; the cocoons were spun there 
the same summer. The mother of these ladies being from the southern 
borders of former Poland, had brought young Mulberry-trees from thence, 
which I saw thrive very well, being standard trees of above fifteen feet high, 
and, near the ground, of about three inches thick. 
They gave me a sheet of paper with some eggs; the next year I had 
