THE ONION. 



143 



seed-pods are used ; they contain an abundance of nutritive 

 mucilage^ which they communicate to soups in which they 

 are boiled; they are used in various other ways^ and are 

 often eaten stewed with butter and spice. The pods, when 

 dried carefully^ retain their mucilaginous property for a long 

 time, and in this state they are occasionally imported, 

 threaded like beads, from Turkey and Greece. There is 

 every reason to believe they may be easily grown in this 

 countrv. 



The pods are about an inch in length, of a conical shape, 

 and covered with a golden-yellow hair, or pile, in the dry state; 

 there are however several varieties, probably differing only 

 in the age of the pods ; they are only brought to this country 

 as presents, chiefly for the Greek and Turkish merchants. 



The Onion. Allium cepa, (Nat. Ord. Liliacece.) 



This esculent root has been known from the earliest times. 

 Thus in the Bible we read, ^'We remember the fish which 

 we did eat in Egypt freely ; the cucumbers, and the melons, 

 and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick,^^ Numbers xi. 5. 

 It is a native of Egypt. Miiller, in his ^ Physiology of Plants,^ 

 mentions that an onion taken from the hand of an Egyptian 

 mummy, perhaps two thousand years old, has been made to 

 grow. Mummy onions are however liable to the same sus- 



