the mulberry-tree: A genus of the tetrandria order, belonging to the monoeia class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 53rd order, Scabridae. The male calyx is quadrupartite; and there is no corolla; the female calyx is tetraphyllous; there is no corolla; two styles; the calyx like a berry, with one seed. There are seven species, viz.

Species. 1. The nigra, or common black-fruited mulberry-tree, rises with an upright, large, rough trunk, dividing into a branchy and very spreading head, rising 20 feet high, or more. It has large, heart-shaped, rough leaves; and monoecious flowers, succeeded in the females by large succulent black-berries. There is a variety with jagged leaves and smaller fruit.—2. The alba, or white mulberry tree, rises with an upright trunk, branching 20 or 30 feet high; garnished with large, oblique, heart-shaped, smooth, light-green, shining leaves, and monoecious flowers succeeded by pale-whitish fruit. There is a variety with purplish fruit. 3. The papryfera, or paper mulberry-tree of Japan, grows 20 or 30 feet high; having large palmated leaves, some trilobate, others quinquelobed; and monoecious flowers, succeeded by small black fruit.—4. The rubra, or red Virginia mulberry-tree, grows 30 feet high; is garnished with very large, heart-shaped, rough leaves, hairy underneath; and has monoecious flowers, succeeded by large reddish berries. 5. The tinctoria, dyer's mulberry, or fulvic, has oblong leaves more extended on one side at the base, with axillary thorns. It is a native of Brazil and Jamaica. 6. The tatarica, or Tartarian mulberry, has ovate oblong leaves equal on both sides and equally serrated. It abounds on the banks of the Wolga and the Tanaïs. 7. The indica, or Indian mulberry, has ovate oblong leaves, equal on both sides, but unequally serrated.

The last three species are tender plants in this country; but the four first are very hardy, and succeed in any common soil and situation. The leaves are generally late before they come out, the buds seldom beginning to open till the middle or towards the latter end of May, according to the temperature of the season; and when these trees in particular begin to expand their foliage, it is a good sign of the near approach of fine warm settled weather; the white mulberry, however, is generally farther in leafing than the black. The flowers and fruit come out soon after the leaves; the males in amen-

tums, and the females in small roundish heads; neither of which are very conspicuous, nor possess any beauty, but for observation. The female or fruitful flowers always rise on the extremity of the young shoots, on short spurs; and with this singularity, that the calyxes of the flowers become the fruit, which is of the berry kind, and composed of many tubercles, each of them furnishing one seed. The fruit matures here gradually from about the middle of August until the middle of September. In dry warm seasons, they ripen in great perfection; but when it proves very wet weather, they ripen but indifferently, and prove devoid of flavour.

Uses, &c. Considered as fruit-trees, the nigra is the only proper sort to cultivate here; the trees being not only the most plentiful bearers, but the fruit is larger and much finer-flavoured than that of the white kind, which is the only other sort that bears in this country. The three next species are chiefly employed to form variety in our ornamental plantations; tho' abroad they are adapted to more useful purposes.

The fruit of the black mulberry is exceedingly grateful to the taste, and is considered at the same time as laxative and cooling. Like the other acid-sweet fruits, it allays thirst (as Dr Cullen observes), partly by refrigerating, and partly by exciting an excretion of mucus from the mouth and fauces; a similar effect is also produced in the stomach, where, by correcting putrefaction, a powerful cause of thirst is removed. A syrup is made from the berries gathered before they are ripe, which, taken as a gargle, is excellent for allaying inflammations of the throat, and for cleansing ulcers in the mouth. The bark of the root, which has an acrid bitter taste, possesses a cathartic power; and has been successfully used as a vermifuge, particularly in cases of tenia; the dose is half a dram of the powder, or a dram of the infusion. The juice of the black mulberry is also employed to give a colour to certain liquors and confections. Some make from it a wine which is not disagreeable; others employ it for giving a high colour to red wine; which it likewise contributes to make sweet.—Although this juice is of no use in dyeing, it gives a red colour to the fingers and to linen, which it is very difficult to remove. Verjuice, forrel, lemon, and green mulberries, remove spots of this kind from the hands; but with respect to linen, the best way is to wet the part which has been stained, and to dry it with the vapour of sulphur; the vitriolic acid which escapes from this substance during combustion, instantly takes off the stain.—The wood of the mulberry tree is yellow, tolerably hard, and may be applied to various uses in turnery and carving. But in order to separate the bark, which is rough, thick, thready, and fit for being made into ropes, it is proper to steep the wood in water.

Mulberry trees are noted for their leaves affording the principal food of that valuable insect the silk-worm. The leaves of the alba, or white species, are preferred for this purpose in Europe; but in China, where the best silk is made, the worms are said to be fed with those of the morus tatarica. The advantages of white mulberry trees are not confined to the nourishment of worms: they may be cut every three or four years like fallows and poplar trees, to make faggots; and the sheep eat their leaves in winter, before they are burnt. This kind of food, of which they are extremely fond, is very nourishing; it gives a delicacy to the flesh, and a fineness and beauty to the wool. In short, in every climate and in most fields, it might be proper, as is the case in Spain, to wait for the first hoar-frost shaking off the leaves, which are gathered and placed to dry in sheds or cart-houses, taking care always to stir them from time to time. In Spain, the sheep are fed on these leaves during the cold and frosts. By this method no injury is done to the mulberries, which produce leaves every year; and it is thought that the beauty and fineness of the Spanish wool is in a great measure owing to the use of this kind of food. From these considerations M. Bourgeois infers, that even in countries where, from the nature of the climate, the scarcity of workmen and the high price of labour, or any other particular causes, silk-worms could not be raised to any advantage, the cultivation of mulberry trees ought not be neglected.—The fruit of the white mulberry has a sweetish and very insipid taste. Birds, however, are very fond of it; and it is remarked that those which have been fed with such fruit are excellent eating.

The papryfera, or paper-mulberry, is so called from the paper chiefly used by the Japanese being made of the bark of its branches; (see the article Paper.) The leaves of this species also serve for food to the silk worm, and is now cultivated with succels in France. It thrives best in sandy soils, grows faster than the common mulberry, and at the same time is not injured by the cold. M. de la Bouviere affirms that he procured a beautiful vegetable silk from the bark of the young branches of this species of mulberry, which he cut while the tree was in sap, and afterwards beat and steeped. The women of Louisiana procure the same kind of production from the shoots which issue from the stock of the mulberry; and which are four or five feet high. After taking off the bark, they dry it in the sun, and then beat it that the external part may fall off; and the internal part, which is fine bark, remains entire. This is again beaten, to make it still finer; after which they bleach it with dew. It is then spun, and various fabrics are made from it, such as nets and fringes; they even sometimes weave it and make it into cloth.—The finest sort of cloth among the inhabitants of Otaheite and others of the South Sea Islands, is made of the bark of this tree, in the manner particularly described under the article Bark.

The tinctoria is a fine timber-tree, and a principal ingredient in most of our yellow dyes, for which it is chiefly imported into Europe. The berries are sweet and wholesome; but not much used, except by the winged tribe, by whose care it is chiefly planted.

Culture of the Mulberry. From the nourishment which it affords to the silk-worm, that valuable insect to which we are indebted for the materials of our finest stuffs, the method of cultivating the mulberry tree must be peculiarly interesting wherever its culture can be undertaken with succels. In France and Italy, vast plantations of the trees are made solely for their leaves to feed the little animals we have mentioned, which amply reward the producers with the supply of silk which they spin from their bowels. Plantations of the mulberry have at different times been recommended in this country for the same purpose; though nothing has yet been done in that way to any extent, and even the expediency of any such attempt has been doubted by others, upon the ground of its interfering with other branches of rural economies more productive and more congenial to our climate.

In the European silk-countries, a great many varieties of mulberry trees are distinguished, arising from difference of climate, soil, method of culture, and other accidental causes. Among the wild mulberries, we meet with some whose leaves are roundish, and resembling those of a rose; hence they have been called the rose-leaved mulberry.

Mulberry trees were first cultivated in France in the reign of Charles IX. It has been found by experience that this tree is not so peculiar to warm countries, such as Spain, Italy, Provence, Languedoc, and Piedmont; but it may also thrive very well in colder countries, such as Touraine, Poitou, Maine, Anjou, Angoumois near Rochefoucault, and even in Germany, where it affords very good nourishment for silk-worms. They grow in all kinds of soil; they thrive best in strong and wet lands; but it is alleged that their leaves constitute too coarse food, prejudicial to the worms, and unfavourable to the quality of the silk.—A good light land is the best kind of soil for raising them. White mulberry trees have been found to grow in sandy soils where heath would scarcely vegetate; but their leaves are too dry, and afford not sufficient nourishment for the silk-worms.

Mulberry trees may be propagated either from shoots which have taken root, or by seed, by layers, and by slips. To raise black mulberry trees, the seed must be taken from the largest and most beautiful mulberries: in raising white ones, the seed is taken from the finest mulberries growing on trees with large whitish soft and tender leaves, and as little cut as possible. The best seed is commonly got from Piedmont, Languedoc, &c. According to M. Duhamel, that seed should be preferred which is gathered in countries where the cold is sometimes pretty severe; because in that case the trees are better able to resist the attacks of the frosts. It frequently happens in severe winters, as M. Bourgeois observes, that the stalks of the young mulberry trees, especially during the first winter, are destroyed by the frost; but when they are cut close to the earth, they send forth as beautiful and vigorous stalks as the former. Good seed ought to be large, heavy, light coloured, to produce a great deal of oil when it is pressed, and to crackle when thrown on a red hot shovel. This seed must be sown in good land.

In the autumn of the second year, all those trees must be pulled up which have small leaves of a very deep green, rough, and deeply indented, for they would produce no leaves proper for the silk-worms.—In the third year, when the mulberry tree is about the thickness of the finger, it must be taken up and put in the nursery. According to M. Bourgeois, mulberries ought to be transplanted in the spring of the second year, which makes them thrive better, and sooner attain their growth. Without this transplantation, they would put forth only one root like a pivot, and most of them would be in danger of perishing when they are taken up to be put where they are intended. tended to remain. Some cultivators of this tree tell us, that all the young trees, whether large or small, straight or crooked, ought to be cut close to the ground in the third year, that they may put forth a greater number of roots. Others never employ this method but with regard to those which are crooked, or in a languishing state.

White mulberries may be raised for the food of silk-worms, either in the form of a copse, or planted in a regular order, by letting them grow to their natural size. Ingrafting is one of the surest methods of procuring fine leaves from mulberries. Mulberries ingrafted on wild stocks chosen from a good kind, such as those which are produced from the seed of the Italian mulberry, commonly called the rose-mulberry, or of the Spanish mulberry, produce, as M. Bourgeois observes, much more beautiful leaves, and of a much better quality for silk-worms, than those which are ingrafted on the common or prickly small-leaved wild-stock. The same observation has been made by a great many cultivators of mulberries, and in particular by M. Thomé of Lyons, whose authority has the greatest weight in whatever regards the cultivation of mulberries and the rearing of silk-worms.

Ingrafted mulberries, it must be confessed, produce a greater number of leaves, and these more nourishing for silk-worms, than wild mulberries. The latter, however, it has been found by experience, may exist for two centuries; whereas the extension of leaves produced by ingrafting, occasions a premature disappearance of the sap of the tree, and thereby accelerates its decay. In a memoir inserted in a treatise on the culture of white mulberries by M. Pomier, it is recommended to ingraft white mulberries upon black ones; and there is reason to think that by following this plan the trees would exist much longer: for it is well known that the white mulberry commonly decays first in the root, whereas the black mulberry is not subject to any malady. In almost all the books on agriculture we find it asserted, that mulberries may be ingrafted on elms. "I will not affirm (says M. Duhamel), that this method of ingrafting has never been successful; but I have frequently tried it in vain, and I have many reasons for thinking that it cannot be attended with any advantage." In works of the same kind, we are likewise told, "that mulberries may be ingrafted on fig and lime trees; but in general such ingrafting will not succeed, unless there is a great analogy betwixt the trees, and particularly unless the sap is set in motion at the same time."

The greater care we take of mulberries, by dressing them, and lopping off the overgrown branches, they produce the greater plenty of good leaves. It is very prejudicial to the mulberries to strip them when too young of their leaves for the purpose of feeding the worms, because the leaves are the organs of perspiration in trees, and likewise contribute greatly to nutrition by means of their absorbing vessels which imbibe the moisture of the atmosphere. Mulberry trees are so plentifully stored with sap, that they renew their leaves sometimes twice or thrice. When the winter is mild, mulberry trees put forth their leaves very early: but it is always dangerous to accelerate the hatching of the worms in expectation of this event; for no leaves can be depended upon till the beginning of May, those which are prior to this period being in danger of being destroyed by the frosts.

In Tuscany, especially in the neighbourhood of Florence, M. Nollet tells us, that though the inhabitants do not cultivate half so many mulberries as the Piedmontese, they rear and feed double the quantity, in proportion, of silk-worms. For this purpose they cause the worms hatch only at two different seasons. The first worms which are hatched are fed on the first produce of the mulberry-trees; and when these have produced their silk, other worms are hatched, which are nourished on the second crop of the same trees.

We are told by M. Bourgeois, that several kinds of white mulberries are now cultivated near Bienne in Switzerland. According to this author, the prickly mulberry is the least esteemed of all the white wild mulberries. Its branches are rough with prickles; its leaves are of a small size and few in number; and the reaping of them is difficult and expensive. The common wild mulberry produces indented leaves, oblong, and very slender; but it is worth being attended to, because it thrives very well when planted in a hedge, and in a favourable exposure: it is also earlier in the spring than the other species. The wild mulberry, which is produced from the rose or Italian ingrafted mulberry, bears a great many leaves, of a roundish shape and middling size, inclining to a light yellow, and of an excellent quality.

Of the white ingrafted mulberry-trees, the rose, or Italian ingrafted mulberry, which is now the species most cultivated in France, Italy, and Piedmont, produces great abundance of large thick and smooth leaves. It has now come into great repute, in consequence of the recommendation of M. Thomé, who prefers it to all other species of mulberry-trees for raising silk-worms. It is extremely delicate, however, and suffered greatly in Switzerland from the severe winters of 1766 and 1767. The mulberry called Roman leaf is distinguished from every other species by its very large leaves, some of which are frequently found equal in size to those of a gourd. The Spanish mulberry greatly resembles the wild rose-mulberry, except that its leaves are larger and more pointed. It is by no means delicate, and can resist the strongest frosts and the severest winters in cold climates. The leaves of the mulberry called the small queen are oblong, moderately large, and exceedingly smooth: this species is of an excellent quality and much esteemed.