tween the Neckar and Mayn, there is hardly any other timber*. In England there are still a good many trees scattered over the country; but the number is not so great as it was formerly, the partiality for the woods of the colonies and other foreign countries having diminished the value of this, as well as of most other species of domestic timber used for finer purposes.

There is still, however, one use to which the walnut-tree is applied, in preference to any other timber, and this use demands the qualities of beauty, durability, and strength: walnut-tree is employed for the stocks of all manner of fire-arms. Before it is used, however, it should be well seasoned, or even baked, as when recent it is very apt to shrink, a disadvantage which is completely got rid of by seasoning.

The walnut grows rapidly till it attains a considerable size, which is even valuable as timber. The absolute duration of the tree has not been ascertained with accuracy; but, probably, the most profitable age for cutting it is the average of hard-wood trees, about fifty or sixty years. The demand for musket and pistol stocks during the late war thinned England of its walnut-trees; and the deficiency should be made up by fresh planting. At that period the timber was so much in demand, that a fine tree has often been sold for several hundred pounds.

Beside the value of its timber, the walnut-tree has many other uses. The ripe nuts are well known as a fruit; the green ones make an agreeable and wholesome pickle; and the oil is used for delicate colours in painting, and for smoothing and polishing wood work sometimes, also, for frying meats, and

*The spring of 1827 was particularly destructive to the walnuts of the Bergstrasse, and the neighbouring parts of Germany, where the walnut is extensively cultivated for the oil. Many thousand trees were killed, and nearly all the branches of the rest were destroyed.

for burning in lamps. When the leaves and recent husks, in their green state, are macerated in warm water, the extract, which is bitter and astringent, is used to destroy insects; and it is a very permanent dye, imparting to wool, hair, or the skin and nails of the living body, a dingy, greenish yellow, which cannot be obliterated without a great deal of labour. On this latter account, it is said to have been used by gypsies, in staining the complexions of stolen children, that they may appear to be their own offspring. The quantity of oil in fresh walnuts is very considerable, being about equal to half the weight of the kernels.

There are several varieties of the common walnut, -as the thick shelled, which afford the best timber; and the thin shelled, which have most fruit, and yield most oil. These, however, are mere varieties; for, as is the case with the oak, and many other trees, in which we find a variation in the colour and shape of the leaves, and in the fruit, all the varieties may be obtained by sowing the nuts of the same tree.

In cultivated vegetables, indeed, there is a confusion of varieties which is not met with in animals. The animal mules, whether quadruped,-as between the horse and the ass or the zebra,-or birds, as the cross of the goldfinch and canary-bird,—are all barren: but the new varieties of plants, though apparently accidental, are generally productive; and thus, by the seeds alone, varieties may be produced almost without end. Many trees of more full growth, in which forced cultivation has destroyed the faculty of perfecting seeds, may be propagated by cuttings or layers.

The form which the branches of the walnut-tree

assume is generally beautiful. In May, the warm hue of its foliage makes a pleasing contrast with other trees; but it opens its leaves late and drops them early.

The white walnut, or Hickery, is a native of North America, where it grows to be a timber tree of considerable dimensions. The nut is rather smaller than that of the common walnut; it is lighter in the colour, and not furrowed in the shell. The kernel is edible, and yields an oil similar to that of the walnut.

T

One part of the wood is more porous than that of the walnut, but the other is more compact: this gives the grain of the wood something the appearance of that of ash; and where it abounds, it is used for similar purposes, the small shoots for hoops, and the grown trees for agricultural instruments. Hickery is very tough and elastic; and therefore it answers remarkably well for fishing-rods, the shafts and poles of carriages, and other purposes where a slender substance of timber has to resist sudden jerks or strains.

In favourable situations, the hickery grows well in England; the specimens in the arboretum of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew are of great size for their age, and very handsome trees. The trunk rises to a considerable height, of nearly uniform thickness, as straight as a line, and without any lateral branches; and it is thus very probable that, if the tree were more generally cultivated, it would make one of the most valuable in the country.

There are two other descriptions of foreign trees, which, though they belong not to the same genus with hickery, are applied to purposes almost similar in the arts; and therefore this is the proper place in which to notice them. They are Lance wood, and the Hassagay wood, of which the natives of Southern Africa make the stems of their spears.

Lance wood (Guatteria virgata) is a native of the island of Jamaica; and though it does not grow to a very great size, it is perhaps one of the most valuable timber-trees in the island. No timber pos

sesses, in a higher degree, the qualities of toughness and elasticity; and therefore none can be better for the shafts of light carriages, and every other purpose where a small body and weight of timber is required to stand a great strain. The very best ash, the toughest of our native timber, is greatly inferior to lance wood, both in strength and elasticity; and in consequence of ash being open and varied in the grain, while lance wood is close and uniform, it does not carve so well into ornaments, take so smooth a polish, or admit of being varnished with so little labour.

The Hassagay Trec (Curtisia faginea) is a larger growing tree than the lance wood, being one of the largest timber trees in Africa. Its leaves resemble those of the birch; the timber is compact, firm, and It is not so much used in this country as

very stiff. the former.

MULBERRY.

The mulberry is a tree of singular and varied uses to man, not so much on account of its timber (for though the timber be close and strong, and very durable, the tree is rather a slow grower) as for its leaves and its bark, and the dye that is obtained from the wood of at least one of the species.

Of the mulberry (Morus) there are many species; and though none of them are natives of England, or probably of Europe, some are sufficiently hardy to thrive in most, and bear fruit in many parts of Britain. The white mulberry (Morus alba) is rather a delicate tree, though it grows very well in Spain, Italy, and the south of France. The berries of it are lightcoloured and insipid.

The black mulberry (Morus nigra) is a larger and more hardy tree; the fruit is a blackish red, and has much more taste than that of the other. The timber of both these species is very durable: it will last as

long in water as the best oak; and the bark is tough and fibrous, and may be made into strong and durable mats and baskets.

The greatest value of the mulberry-tree in the arts consists in its being the favourite food of the silkworm. That insect, and this use of the mulberrytree, were both unknown to the Greeks and Romans; though there is every reason to believe that they

were then, and perhaps earlier, known to the Chinese, and possibly to some of the other inhabitants of central and southern Asia.

The rearing of silk-worms, and the manufacture of silk, are said to have been introduced into the Western world in the sixth century of the Christian era. About the year 550, two monks, natives of Persia, while employed as missionaries to the Christian churches in India, are said to have penetrated as far as China, where they acquired a knowledge of the rearing of the silk-worm, and the working of silk. Upon their return, they explained to the Greek emperor at Constantinople the nature and importance of those operations, and undertook to bring to that capital as many silk-worms as should suffice for esta