7. Some experienc’d husbandmen advise to poll our mulberries every three or four years, as we do our willows; others not till 8 years; both erroneously. The best way is yearly to prune them of their dry and superfluous branches, and to form their heads round and natural. The first year of removal where they are to abide, cut off all the shoots, to five or six of the most promising; the next year leave not above three of these, which dispose in triangle as near as may be, and then disturb them no more, unless it be to purge them (as we taught) of dead seare-wood, and extravagant parts, which may impeach the rest; and if afterward any prun’d branch shoot above three or four cyons, reduce them to that number. One of the best ways of pruning is, what they practise in Sicily and Provence, to make the head hollow, and like a bell, by cleansing them of their inmost branches; and this may be done, either before they bud, _viz._ in the new-moon of March, or when they are full of leaves in June or July, if the season prove any thing fresh. Here I must not omit what I read of the Chinese culture, and which they now also imitate in Virginia, where they have found a way to raise these plants of the seeds, which they mow and cut like a crop of grass, which sprout, and bear leaves again in a few months: They likewise (in Virginia) have planted them in hedges, as near together as we do gooseberries and currans, for their more convenient clipping, which they pretend to do with scissers. 8. The mulberry is much improv’d by stirring the mould at root, and letation.