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XXVII. On the Management of the Onion. By Thomas 

 Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. fyc. 



Read April 4, 1809. 



Th e first object of the Horticultural Society being to point 

 out improvements in the culture of those plants which are 

 extensively useful to the public, I send a few remarks on the 

 management of one of these, the Onion ; which both consti- 

 tutes one of the humble luxuries of the poor, and finds 

 its way, in various forms, to the tables of the affluent and 

 luxurious. 



Every bulbous rooted plant, and indeed every plant which 

 produces leaves, and lives longer than one year, generates, 

 in one season, the sap, or vegetable blood, which composes 

 the leaves and roots of the succeeding spring ; and when the 

 sap has accumulated during one or more seasons, it is ulti- 

 mately expended in the production of blossoms and seeds. 

 This reserved sap is deposited in, and composes in a great 

 measure, the bulb ; and the quantity accumulated, as well 

 as the period required for its accumulation, varies greatly 

 in the same species of plant, under more or less favourable 

 circumstances. Thus the Onion, in the south of Europe, ac- 

 quires a much larger size during the long and warm summers 

 of Spain and Portugal, in a single season, than the colder 

 climate of England ; but under the following mode of cul- 

 ture, which I have long practised, two summers in England 



