About 300 species exclusively in the warmer climates. The white Mulberry (_M. alba_, from China, India, Mongolia) is cultivated for the sake of its leaves, which are the indispensable food for silkworms. The black Mulberry (_M. nigra_, W. Asia) is cultivated for its fruits, which are used for the officinal Mulberry juice. The ordinary Fig-tree (_Ficus carica_) is from the Mediterranean. The fruit of the well-known Oriental Sycamore (_F. sycomorus_) is edible. The Bread-fruit tree (_Artocarpus incisa_) and the Jack (_A. integrifolia_) have their home in the South Sea Islands, and are cultivated in tropical countries. The Bread-fruit is morphologically the same as the Mulberry. It has a very large, spheroid inflorescence, whose floral-leaves and perianth become fleshy and united into one nutritious mass, together with the axis, which is also fleshy. The milky juice of the India-rubber tree (_Ficus elastica_, East Indies, a common house-plant), and of _Castilloa elastica_ (Am.) is the raw material of India-rubber. The milky juice of _Galactodendron utile_ (Cow-tree, S. Am.) is saccharine and nutritious, but in _Antiaris toxicaria_ (the Upas-tree, of Java) it is a strong poison. The bast of the Paper-Mulberry tree (_Br. papyrifera_, Eastern Asia); is used in Japan for paper. Shellac is obtained from a small, hemipterous insect (_Coccus lacca_), which lives upon _Ficus laccifera_ and _F. religiosa_ (the Bo-tree, sacred to Buddha), E. India. The wood of _Maclura aurantica_ (Am.) has a yellow colour, and is known as yellow Brazilian wood. Order 4. =Cannabaceæ.= The plants which belong to this order are _aromatic herbs_, either annuals or perennials, _without latex_. Leaves _palminerved_, and more or less divided, hispid, and with free, persistent stipules. Flowers always _diœcious_; ♂-flowers in panicles, formed of dichasia, passing over into uniparous scorpioid cymes. They differ from the Nettles, particularly in the 5-leaved perianth of the ♂-flower, the 5 stamens (Fig. 346–351) with filaments _erect_ in the bud, and in the ♀-flower by the small, entire, cup-like perianth, which surrounds the base of the ovary (Fig. 346, p. 352). The ovary has two styles, or one divided into two, with two stigmas and a pendulous, curved ovule (Fig. 346 _B_, 352 _B_); the fruit is a nut; the _embryo_ is _curved_ (Hemp, Fig. 353), or rolled (Hop, Fig. 349), _without endosperm_. [Illustration: FIG. 346.--Diagram of male and female flowers of the Hop and Hemp: _b_ the bract, _p_ the perianth. The position of the embryo is indicated.]