126 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BUSINESS MEETING. 



Saturday, March 23, 1889. 



An adjourned meeting of the Society was holden at half-past 

 eleven o'clock, the President, Henry P. Walcott, in the Chair. 



Benjamin G. Smith announced the decease of Charles L. Flint, 

 formerly Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, and moved 

 that a committee of three be appointed to prepare a memorial. 

 The motion was cf'rned, and the Chair appointed, as that Commit- 

 tee, Mr. Smith, O. B. Hadwen, and Robert Manning. 



Adjourned to Saturday, March 30, 1889. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



The Onion ; Its Varieties and Cultivation. 

 By Hon. James J. H. Gregory, Marblehead. 



Owing to the low prices at which onions have been raised in the 

 West, their culture is a sore subject, but in spite of such draw- 

 backs the farmer's occupation is the most independent of all. 

 He can get a living when those of no other occupation can, for 

 he can fall back on mother earth. His business is the only one 

 that admits of barter ; to this day we may see in country stores 

 two prices affixed to goods, the cash price and the barter price. 



Botanically the onion belongs to the lily family. One difference 

 between it and other plants of the same family is the presence of 

 the dr}' outer skin on the bulb. The onion is a bulb — in reality 

 a bud ; it is not solid like the tuber, which is a thickened stem or 

 root. All the leaves begin at the bulb, which makes its greatest 

 growth while the leaves are dying down, and this seems to confirm 

 the popular saying among farmers that " the top has gone into 

 the bottom." That the onion is a true bulb is shown by the 

 manner in which it starts in the spring — not from all over the top 

 like a beet or a carrot, but with a sprout from the heart at the 

 centre like a cabbage, which is also physiologically a bud, the 

 outer layers wrapping and protecting the germ just as in the case 

 of the buds of a tree. 



The native home of the onion is in the mother country of our 

 race and of a very large proportion of the food-yielding plants 



