644 ALLIACEOUS ESCULENTS. 



also cultivated in British gardens, but not of such antiquity as the 

 common onion. The onion is in universal use, when young, in 

 salads ; and when more advanced, or when mature, in soups, stews, or 

 alone boiled or roasted. 



Varieties and Species. The silver-skinned ; chiefly used for 

 pickling. Nuneham Park, Danvers' Yellow, Bedfordshire Cham- 

 pion, Strasburgh, Deptford, James's Keeping, Blood-red, White 

 Spanish, Heading, Brown Portugal, and Tripoli. The Welsh onion, 

 or ciboule (A. fistulosum, L.), a native of Siberia, strongly flavoured, 

 but does not bulb ; very hardy, sown in autumn for drawing in 

 spring. The underground, or potato onion (A. Cepa, var. aggregatum, 

 G. Don), multiplies by young bulbs on the parent root, which have all 

 the properties of the common onion, and are equally productive, but 

 do not keep longer than February. The tree, or bulb-bearing onion, 

 syn. Egyptian onion (A. Cepa, var. viviparurn) ; the stem produces 

 bulbs instead of flowers, and when these bulbs are planted they pro- 

 duce underground onions of considerable size, and being much 

 stronger flavoured than those of any other variety, they go farther in 

 cookery. 



Propagation and Culture. All the kinds, except the last two, are pro- 

 pagated by seeds, of which two ounces will be requisite for a bed four 

 feet by twenty-four feet, to be drawn young ; or one ounce for a bed five 

 feet by twenty-four feet, to remain till they are full grown ; two ounces 

 of seed to sow 800 feet of drill a foot apart. The seed will come up 

 in about a fortnight. The soil in which the onion succeeds best is a 

 strong loam well enriched with manure, which may be of the strongest 

 kind, such as bullocks' blood, night soil, powdered bones, &c., pre- 

 viously rotted. It should be well pulverized to a considerable depth. 

 The best mode is to sow in drills, nine inches apart for the smaller 

 kinds, and a foot for such as are larger ; the plants to be thinned out 

 when three inches high to four inches, six inches, or eight inches, 

 according to the kind, or whether onions of large or moderate size are 

 wished for. To produce small onions for pickling, the silver-skinned 

 variety, or the Nocera, should be sown thick, or very thick, according 

 to the size wanted; and to produce very large onions, the Tripoli 

 ought to be sown thin, and the soil stirred once or twice during the 

 summer, care being taken, in this and in every other case of stirring 

 the soil among onions, not to earth up the incipient bulb, that being 

 found to impede its swelling. Liquid manure may be freely applied. 

 The time for sowing a main crop, to produce bulbs for keeping through 

 the winter, is the beginning or middle of March ; and great care is 

 requisite not to cover the seed more than an inch, and to press the 

 soil on it firmly by treading or rolling. Thinning and hoeing-up 

 weeds should be performed with a two-inch hoe, and the soil may be 

 stirred with a common Dutch or draw-hoe ; or, if the plants are 

 very close, with the sickle hoe, fig. 376. When the seeds are to be 

 sown in drills, these may be made either singly with the drill-hoe, fig. 

 377, or in three or four at a time, by the drill-rake, fig. 378. The 

 teeth of this rake, like the head, are of wood ; the latter being pierced 



