100 On the Culture of the Shallot, $c. 



forming organs capable of collecting and assimilating new 

 matter; but exclusive of some impurities it contained, it 

 probably had not given a particle of organizable matter to 

 the plant. The formation of organs, and the action of those 

 organs when formed, must not therefore be confounded, as 

 has generally been done, and constantly by chemists who 

 have endeavoured to ascertain the action of the leaves upon 

 the surrounding air ; and hence appear to have arisen the 

 confused and contradictory results of their experiments. 



I am wholly ignorant of the mode of management by which 

 bulbous roots of different kinds, acquire so much greater per- 

 fection in the hands of the Dutch gardeners, than in those of 

 our own countrymen : but I suspect that the Dutch gardeners 

 employ subsoils of very great depth and richness, with which 

 the bulbs are prevented coming into contact by the inter- 

 vention of a thin layer of dry sand, with which substance they 

 may be also thinly, or only partially, covered ; and I am in 

 part led to adopt this opinion, by observing the similarity of 

 character in the external membranes of their bulbous roots, 

 and of those of the Shallots, which had been wholly exposed 

 to the sun and air. 



