MULBERRY. The mulberry family (Moraceae) is usually included, along with the closely-allied figs, breadfruits, nettles, hops, planes, and elms, in one vast alliance of monochlamydeous Exogens, the order Urticaceae (or Ul- maceae, as Bâillon prefers to call it). The Moraceae include three sub-families, of which the typical genera are: Dorstenia, which is almost a Fig; Broussonetia, the Paper Mulberry of Japan, the East Indies, and the South Sea Islands; and Morus, the Mulberry proper, of which the ten or twelve species are all native to temperate regions in Asia and America, or to hill regions in their tropics, but are readily cultivated in similar climates in Europe, Africa, and Australia.

The Black Mulberry (Morus nigra, I..) is mainly cultivated for its purplish black compound fruit (a sorosis formed by the aggregated drupes of the whole female inflorescence), which is wholesome and palatable if eaten fresh from the tree before acetous fermentation has had time to set in. Save in syrup, and on account of its rich dark-red colouring matter, it has no longer any pharmaceutical uses. (See Horticulture, vol. xii. p. 272.)

The White Mulberry (Jf. alba, I..), so called from its nearly white fruit, is the one mainly employed in sericulture. There are many varieties, among which the Philippine Mulberry (var. multicaulis) is perhaps most highly esteemed. The American and Indian species (J∕. americana and 3f. indica, the latter not to be confounded with Morinda citrifolia, a cinchonaceous tree, sometimes also called Indian Mulberry) are also cultivated for the same purpose....

TREE, בכא, 2 Sam. v, 23, 24; 1 Chronicles xiv, 14, 15; Psalm lxxxiv, 7. The LXX, in Chronicles, render the word by ἀπίων, pear trees;” so Aquila and the Vulgate, both in Samuel and Chronicles, _pyrorum_.” Others translate it the mulberry tree.” More probably it is the large shrub which the Arabs still call baca;” and which gave name to the valley where it abounded. Of this valley Celsius remarks, that it was rugged and embarrassed with bushes and stones, which could not be passed through without labour and tears;” referring to Psalm lxxxiv, 7; and the rough valley,” Deut. xxi, 4; and he quotes from a manuscript of Abu'l Fideli a description of the tree which grew there, and mentions it as bearing a fruit of an acrid taste.