I think I have mentioned in several of my letters, that the mulberry tree is much cultivated in this region, principally for the raising of the silk-worm. At times vegetables are raised on the same lot, but generally nothing else is allowed to grow among them, and the weeds are carefully removed. The trees are planted in rows, and the plough is passed among them several times in the year. I now find that the tree serves another purpose, and one of some importance, though secondary to the making of silk. They gather the leaves from the trees in the fall and beginning of winter, to feed their sheep and cows. The first crop of leaves is eaten by the silk-worms; by the time the worms begin to spin their silken shrouds, the trees are nearly bare; the branches are then all cut close to the body of the tree, and used for fuel. In a few days new branches shoot out, which are soon covered with leaves. They gather the leaves with their hands, put them in baskets, and give them to their sheep and cows. They appear, indeed, to be the chief food of these animals for many months in the autumn and beginning of winter. The entire absence of rain during the long hot summer burns up what grass may have been on the ground in the spring and early part of the summer, but the mulberry trees, which have much care taken of them, and watered, when it can be done, by a channel from a stream, or by the hand, retain their greenness, and serve the important purpose of food for the cattle. So far as I have observed, they were always fed with the green leaves, at least I have not seen any dried and preserved in that state, excepting the fibres of the new leaves, that the silk-worm rejects, which are carefully collected and preserved for the animals. The mildness of the climate causes the leaf to retain its freshness much longer than it would in the northern and middle parts of the United States. We have entered on the month of December, and yet the leaf of the mulberry is as green and fresh as it was in midsummer; true, most of the trees near us are nearly bare, not, however, by the fall of the leaf, but by their having been gathered for the animals. The horses, mules, and donkeys, are fed with barley and straw, which is cut fine by their mode of threshing out the grain. For a few weeks in the spring of the year they are kept on the green barley. I have generally seen the camel fed on weeds, which are gathered for that purpose.