MORUS, in botany, mulberry tree, a ge nus of the Monoecia Tetrandria class and order. Natural order of Scabride. Urtice, Jussieu. Essential character : male, calyx four-parted ; corolla none : female, calyx four-leaved ; corolla none ; styles two ; calyx becoming a berry ; seed one. There are seven species, of which we shall no tice the M. papyrifera, paper mulberry tree. The inhabitants of Japan make paper of the bark ; they cultivate the trees for this purpose on the mountains, much after the same manner as osiers are cultivated with us, cutting down the young shoots in December, after the leaves are fallen ; these, heingdivided into rods of three feet in length, are gathered into bundles to be boiled ; they are placed erect and close in a large copper pro perly closed, and the boiling continued till the separation of the bark shears the naked wood, after which, by a longitu dinal incision, the bark is stripped off, and dried, the wood being rejected. To
purify the bark they keep it three or four hours in water ; when it is sufficiently softened, the cuticle, which is of a dark colour, together with the greenish surface of the inner bark, is pared of; at the same time the stronger bark is separated from the more tender ; the former making the whitest and best paper ; the latter a dark and inferior kind.
The finest and whitest cloth, worn by the principal people at Otaheite, and in the Sandwich islands, is made of the bark of this tree. The bread fruit tree makes a cloth inferior in whiteness and softness, worn chiefly by the inferior people. Cloth is also made of a tree resembling the wild fig-tree of the West Indies; it is coarse and harsh, the colour of the dark est brown paper ; but it is the most valu able, because it resists the water. This is perfumed, and worn by the chiefs as a morning dress in Otaheite.