214 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



practice is never adopted now. All the same, some of 

 the finest crops of Onions I have seen have been produced 

 on fairly stiff soil. That is notably the case every year 

 at Hackwood Park, where the large Onion-bed, from seed 

 sown in March, and in rows 14 inches apart, becomes in 

 the autumn a remarkable sight. Last year the produce was 

 80 bushels of fine, clean, serviceable bulbs on about 15 rods of 

 ground. And this year there were 70 bushels on the same area, 

 giving at this ratio the enormous crops of 800 bushels and 

 G40 bushels per acre, which, sold at the very low price of 2s. 

 per bushel only, would give the splendid return of £80 and £G4 

 per acre — a truly wonderful result. The fact is worth mentioning 

 as showing what sorts of Onion crops are possible on well- 

 prepared and manured stiff, holding soil. The trial crop of 

 onions at Chiswick was much below either of these averages ; but 

 then the Chiswick soil is exceptionally light, and under the 

 circumstance the crop was a really good one. I have not by me 

 any reference to the sorts grown at Hackwood last year, but 

 those grown this year — when with moister weather the crop 

 would no doubt have been 20 bushels heavier, so good were 

 the samples produced — were Maincrop, Bedfordshire Cham- 

 pion, Ne Plus Ultra, Sutton's Al, and the Sutton Globe. There 

 is very little to be said in relation to what may be called the 

 ordinary culture of Onions that is new. In all our horticultural 

 writing and essays we are compelled to admit the force of the 

 old axiom, " There is nothing new under the sun." But that 

 being so, it does seem still perpetually needful to reproduce 

 the old stories, the old ideas, the old and often unexcelled 

 practice, which has in the past won in gardening such 

 triumphs and produced such splendid results. I do not say that 

 we have nothing new in culture to learn, but what I do say is 

 that present practice, based upon that of a century ago, shows 

 that development is slow, and is based more on material than 

 it is on method. But if we have only in the most trifling 

 degree departed from the practice of our forefathers in Onion 

 culture for ordinary purposes, we have certainly done so in re- 

 lation to the production of what are now termed show or exhi- 

 bition bulbs. The gardener or competitor at shows who has 

 failed to produce Onions under the newer method, howsoever 

 handsome, firm, clean — nay, even beautiful — his bulbs are, will 



