Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 2 · column 1 of 4 · from the scan, no model involved
prowling about in the vanishing light of the last day of May, I came across one of these trees with glossy leaves and small, dry fruits of a deep red color.
This tree I now know is the White Mulberry, Morus alba, a tree introduced from Asia. Though named for its white fruit, the tree I was admiring had red fruit. Fruits of this mulberry vary in color from white, through pink to violet.
Mulberry trees were brought to the New World by the British before the Revolution in hopes that the cultivation of the silkworrti, which feeds on the leaves of this tree, would be a rewarding enterprise for the colonists and would, eventually, benefit the mother country. Silk was much in demand.
The project was doomed from the beginning. Too much watchful work was involved, I suppose. Colonists were too busy clearing the land and building homes to watch a bunch of worms. Besides, some native critter ate the emerging silkworm caterpillars. The 1 tree adjusted well to the climate here and was spread by birds that find the fruits much to their liking. Now it is everywhere.
Like the other two species of mulberry, the tree I was investigating had irregularly shaped leaves with teeth along the edges. I The upper surface of the smallish leaves had a glossy shine. Some leaves had a mitten shape; others had three and even four lobes and a large number were entire, egg-shaped
97.9%