130 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



Now all the tunics are supposed to be taken off, and only 

 the three fillets or threads which we spoke of are left 

 (A, B, Q. Fillet A is all that is left (within the bulb) of 

 the stem which flowered eighteen months ago. 



Fillet C is the remains of the stem of the last flower borne 

 by the bulb, six months before. 



Fillet D is the stem which is about to flower in six 

 months' time (the flower buds are already sufficiently formed 

 to be seen), and E contains the stem and tunic leaves, which 

 are to come into bud in another eighteen months. 



If, when the bulb is in full flower, you divest it of all its 

 tunics, till you come to the flower stem, — you will find at the 

 base of it a very tiny bud ; if you take away the stem, which 

 easily breaks off, you will find the bud remains firmly 

 attached to the base of the bulb. If you open the bud with 

 a penknife, you will see it is composed of six or seven little 

 leaves (or fans), and inside a tiny stem, furnished with buds, 

 which has begun to grow already, and from the moment 

 the bulb is laid on the shelves it increases till the time 

 comes for putting it again in the earth. We have been 

 speaking all this time of the double hyacinth. The 

 single hyacinth is somewhat differently constructed, for 

 it usually throws out several shoots from the sides as well as 

 from the centre. The single bulb does not appear to last so 

 long, for its fillets are fewer, but the number of flowering 

 stems it produces, and the irregularity of their growth, makes 

 it difficult to follow it in its various stages of development as 

 exactly as one can the double. By dint of observing, year 

 after year, bulbs, both those in a good state of preservation 

 and some partially decomposed, it has been discovered that 

 the bulb always loses the same number of outer tunics as it 

 gains interiorly new ones. When once a bulb has acquired 

 the regulation number of tunics, it will always keep to the 

 same number year by year, and nevertheless every year it is 



