S;52 
CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS. 
are planted entire. In a sliort time the shoots 
are seen above the ground, generally from five 
to eight to each bulb. They should be care- 
fully kept from weeds. About the middle or 
the end of August, at the latest, they may be 
gathered, and their leaves taken off. We be- 
lieve they are equally productive in other 
countries as well as Russia." It has been 
believed for some time that this onion was 
first brought from Egypt by some officers of 
the English army, who introduced it to this 
country in the year 1805. It appears, how- 
ever, from a paper published in the Transac- 
tions of the Horticultui'al Society of London, 
(iii. 305,) that this bulb was ah-eady cultivated 
in 1796, in Messrs. Driver's nursery. This 
onion is rather productive, and its taste is not 
so strong as that of many other sorts, a quality 
which with many people is no small consider- 
ation. It propagates itself under gTOund by 
forming young bulbs, and when gathered, the 
crop is most abundant. It ripens also sooner 
than the other sorts ; but it ought not to be 
taken out of the ground until it is quite ripe. 
The following method ha's been found success- 
ful in growing this onion. It is necessary 
that the soil in which the bulbs are planted 
should be rich and in good condition. A 
series of beds four feet broad having been 
formed, three equidistant lines are drawn 
in each, and on these lines the onions are 
planted about ten inches apart. Care should 
be taken to preserve the quincunx or che- 
quered disposition of the lines, for the sake of 
regularity and neatness. When the bulbs are 
planted, they may be covered with leaf- mould, 
stable-litter, or even some old compost ; only 
the very extremity of the bulb should be left 
exposed. As they come up, a dry day should 
be chosen to draw the earth to them in the 
same way as is done with potatoes, and after- 
wards they should be carefully weeded. In 
this and neighbouring countries onions are 
extensively cultivated ; this variety is planted 
at the season when the days are shortest, and 
the crop is gathered in midsummer. Only 
the middling-sized bulbs ai'e planted. In 
Devonshire they are planted in furrows six 
inches apart, and at twelve inches in the row. 
In Scotland the same mode is folio w^ed. — 
Ghent Armales. 
Fossir. Forest. — I determined upon a trip 
into the Desert to see the Fossil forest, as a 
large tract of country covered with fossil 
wood is called . . . Our course lay to the south 
of Cairo, along the ridge of hills at whose 
Nileward termination the city is built. These 
hills are limestone . . . For the first few miles 
out of Cairo, there was scarce a trace of vege- 
tation. About five or six miles south of 
Cairo, the scenery changes totally, the country 
being broken up into broad valleys, and every 
here and there a little vegetation . . i All 
the soil is limestone rock, with a profusion of 
sand and pebbles, and occasionally fragments 
of fossil-wood. As we proceeded, the bits of 
fossil-wood became more and more frequent, 
and larger, till, about eight or ten miles south- 
east of Cairo, the whole pebbly and rocky 
soil of the plain part of the Desert consisted 
of fossil- wood, chiefly rolled pebbles and frag- 
ments, but now and then huge trunks, pro- 
strate and half-buried in the sand, always 
broken up into truncheons. Most of them 
were heaped together in the greatest confu- 
sion : more I'arely, individual trees l;iy iso- 
lated, frequently 70 feet long, some 120, and 
it is said even 140. Their colour is generally 
dark reddish brown : they are all chalcedony 
and agate of a coarse description, with the 
rings of the wood well preserved. The sandy 
limestone (full of shells) and soil of the Desert 
are white ; so that this fossil vegetation con- 
trasted curiously with the general appearance 
of the country. Here the Pacha had sunk a 
pit for coal, sapiently concluding that so much 
fossil-wood above-ground indicated no less 
below. He however did not get through the 
limestone rock, which is subjacent to the 
foi'mation to which I presume the fossil-wood 
belongs. Contrasted with the surrounding 
sterility, this record of a once luxuriant vege- 
tation is a very impressive object, for it is not 
confined to a few miles only of Desert, but (I 
am given to understand) extends forty or 
fifty in one direction. I do not at all suppose 
that these forests ever characterised the Desert, 
or the land now replaced by desert, in its pre- 
sent relation to the general features of Egypt. 
On the contrary, I expect that the fossil trees 
were imbedded in layers of conglomerate and 
sandstone which have been gradually destroyed 
by the ocean, leaving the silicified trees to 
resist for the greater part the action of that 
surf by which the softer rock v/as, triturated, 
forming the sand and pebbles of the Desert. 
About one hundred miles above Cairo the 
sandstone rocks commence and the limestone 
ceases ; and as on the Nile behind Cairo de- 
tached masses of the same sandstone rock as 
the statue of Memj)his is cut from occur, so it 
appears probable that this pebbly bed with 
fossil-trees belonged to that series of rocks all 
of which, south of lat. 29°, are v/ashed away, 
leaving only the agatized trees, all grievously 
water-worn, many being ground up with the 
sand into pebbles. — Dr. Hooker, in Journal 
of Botany. 
Zabuca.jo is a new esculent nut, recently 
imported into this country. " In the Museum 
of the Royal Gardens of Kew may be seen 
some nuts or seeds, under the name of 
Zahucajo. They were brought to us by our 
friend Mr. Purdie (lately engaged on a bo- 
