The Mulberry Tree

Abstract

AN effort is being made to introduce once more into England the cultivation of the mulberry tree, and as the leaves of either the white or black variety (but especially those of the former) afford food for the silkworm, and both kinds will flourish in a tolerably mild and moist climate, there seems to be no reason why we should be altogether dependent upon foreign sources for a supply of raw material for the looms of Coventry and Macclesfield. Certainly the present is a favourable opportunity for making the experiment, as the price of silk has been largely enhanced by disease amongst the worms in the south of Europe, and by the destruction of the mulberry trees in China during the rebellion. At Yately, in Hampshire, Captain Mason has for the last three or four years been successfully engaged in rearing silkworms, and he calculates that if his mulberry plantations had been made upon a sufficiently extensive scale, a profit of 10l. an acre might have been easily realised. King James I. preceded him in this speculation, and imported ship-loads of mulberry trees from France with the view of encouraging the production of silk in England. In 1629 Walter Lord Aston was appointed “to the custody of the garden, mulberry trees, and silkworms near St. James's, in the county of Middle-sex.” But the scheme, like many others framed by the same monarch, proved abortive, and within a few years the mulberry garden became, in the words of Evelyn, “the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at.” Pursuing its history a little further we find the gardens converted into the site of Buckingham House, and in our own time Dr. King's allusion, written a century and a half ago, is a good deal more true than when he penned it:—