Singular Leaves of the Mulberry. 
307 
the cottages improved as I have hinted, in contrast with the same 
cottage in its former state. 
Hoping to see the time when every English Cottager shall possess 
what may emphatically be called “A Home!” 
1 remain, Gentlemen, 
Y ours, 
Derby, November 183J. Philo-Cot- 
Article XII.— On a Singular Variation in the Leaves of a 
Midherrg Tree. By W. R-, of Palmer’s Green. 
Gentlemen, 
I THINK the enclosed specimens, and their history, sufficiently 
curious for insertion in your Magazine;—if you are of the same opinion, 
it will be easy for you, by means of a dotted outline, to give your readers 
an idea of the shape of the leaves. 
I came to the house in which I now reside, about fifteen months ago, 
and was pleased to find in my garden, amongst a pretty good collection 
of fruit trees, a Mulberry Tree. Now, Gentlemen, you must be aware 
that to a mind at all cultivated, the pleasure derived from a garden, does 
not entirely arise from the gratification it affords the senses, but is greatlv 
increased by the associations which its fruits and flowers have with the 
most elegant and cherished ideas of that mind. A Rose is not only a 
beautiful flower, displaying a charming colour, and yielding a delicious 
smell, but it is the 
“Tendre fruit des pleurs d’Aurore, 
“ Objet des baisirs du Zephyr, ' 
“ Reine de I’ empire de Flore;” 
it is the dearest theme of the poet, from Anacreon and Sappho, to the 
Anacreon of our own day. Indeed, not a flower or a fruit, but, by its 
associations, or its power to force us 
“To look through Nature up to Nature’s God,” 
possesses a charm for the reflecting mind; far, far beyond the works of 
man. 
It were easy for the pen to run riot on this theme ;—but, this is an 
account of a Mulberry Tree. The idea of this tree is so immediately 
connected with the name of Shakespeare, that the bare mention of it, 
carries us away to New Place, at Stratford: we see that bard, who has im¬ 
mortalized himself, and the language he wrote in, delighting, as all great ' 
minds must, in the productions of Nature, planting his Mulberry Tree, in 
the town of his birth. From the day that this became known, there is no 
Shakespearean who does not eat the delicious fruit with additional zest:— 
