68 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



cultivated plant, but there is no other difference. Dr. 

 Regel, jun., found it to the south of Kuldscha, in Western 

 Siberia.^ Thus my former conjectures are completely 

 justified ; and it is not unlikely that its habitation extends 

 even as far as Palestine, as Hasselquist said. 



Tlie onion is designated in China by a single sign 

 (pronounced tsung), which may suggest a long existence 

 there as an indigenous plant.^ I very much doubt, how- 

 ever, that the area extends so far to the east, 



Humboldt * says that the Americans have always been 

 acquainted with onions, in Mexican seonacatl. " Cortes, " 

 he says, " speaking of the comestibles sold at the market 

 of the ancient Tenochtillan, mentions onions, leeks, and 

 garlic." I cannot believe, however, that these names 

 applied to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloanc, in 

 the seventeenth century, had only seen one Allium 

 cultivated in Jamaica [A. Cepa), and that was in a garden 

 with other European vegetables.* The word xonacatl is 

 not in Hernandez, and Acosta ^ says distinctly that the 

 onions and garlics of Peru are of European origin. The 

 species of .the genus Allium are rare in America. 



Spring, or Welsh Onion — Allium fistulosvm,, Linnseus. 



This species was for a long time mentioned in floras 

 and works on horticulture as of unknown origin ; but 

 Russian botanists have found it wild in Siberia towards 

 the Altai mountains, on the Lake Baikal in the land of 

 the Kirghis." The ancients did not know the planf It 

 must have come into Europe through Russia in the 

 Middle Ages, or a little later. Dodoens,® an author of 

 the sixteenth century, has given a figure of it, hardly 

 recognizable, under the name of Cepa oblonga. 



Shallot — Allium, ascalonicum, Linnaeus. 



It was believed, according to Pliny,'* that this plant 



• m. Eortic, 1877, p. 167. 



' Bretsohneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 47 and 7. 



* Nov/velle Espagne, 2nd edit., ii. p. ^^(i. 



* Sloans, Jam., i. p. 75. 



» Acosta, Hist. Nat. dcs Indes, French trans., p. 166. 



• Ledebour, Flora Kossica, iv. p. 169. 



^ Lenz, Botanik. der Alien Gricclicn vmd Romer, p. 295. 



» Dodoens, Penvptades, p. 687. » Pliny, Hist, 1. 19, o. 6. 



