How strange it was that out of the vast variety of vegetation these tiny creatures would eat nothing but mulberry leaves! Over and over again, M. Bretton told his children, people had experimented with the leaves of other plants--with lettuce, spinach, and various of the greens from the garden. But it was useless. The wee spinners scorned every such offering. One woman, it is true, had succeeded in raising a few worms on witch-grass; but they had not prospered, the silk from their cocoons proving poor. Mulberry leaves they craved and mulberry leaves they must have. In time the French peasants as well as the silk raisers of other nations abandoned their experiments and went to learning how to grow mulberry trees, studying with care not only which mulberry was best for their silkworms but also which of the species flourished most successfully in the soil of their particular country. The more they investigated the more varieties of mulberries came to light. There was the Tartarica, or Tartar mulberry, found on the Volga; the Papyfera, or paper mulberry, from Japan; the Chinese mulberry; and the more common varieties of red, black, and white mulberry. To the soil of southern France the so-called white mulberry tree seemed best adapted, and therefore the French peasants began cultivating it extensively, mingling with it, however, some of the rarer Chinese cuttings when these could be secured. Many a lesson did the people learn about the mulberry tree while they were perfecting its growth! They found the leaves could be reached much more easily if the top of the tree was clipped so that it would grow low and bushy; this enabled children to harvest the leaves, and did away with expensive labor. But because of the luxuriant climate of France and Italy the trees of those countries could seldom be kept low, and usually gatherers had to use ladders to reach the leaves--a process by which many of them were injured and rendered useless. As no silkworm would touch a bruised leaf much of the crop was wasted. In China, where the trees seldom grew beyond the size of shrubs, the conditions for gathering perfect leaves were ideal; especially as the Chinese cut away much of the under part of the trees, so that the gatherers might go in beneath them. In addition to these interesting facts people discovered that if a single twig was broken from the mulberry tree several new shoots would branch out in its place. This was surely a valuable thing to know. Moreover, they learned that the leaves of the white mulberry were the most tender; that those of the red ranked next; and that the black came last in delicacy. Few French or Italian people used the black, but in the colder countries, where it flourished better than did other kinds, it was used almost entirely. Another delightful discovery of the sericulturists, as silkworm raisers are called, was that when their mulberry trees were once properly planted they would, with good