206 
it is ultimately 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 circum- 
stances. Thus, the Onion, in the south of Europe, acquires 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 culture, which 1 
have long practised, two summers in England produce nearly 
the effect of one in Spain or Portugal, and the Onion assumes 
nearly the form and size of those thence imported. 
Seeds of the Spanish or Portugal Onion are sown at the 
usual period in the spring, very thickly and in poor soil ; gen- 
erally under the shade of a fruit tree ; and in such situation 
the bulbs, in the autumn, are rarely found much to exceed 
the size of a large pea. These are then taken from the 
ground, and preserved till the succeeding spring, when they are 
planted at equal distances from each other, and they afford 
plants which differ from those raised immediately from seed, 
only in possessing much greater strength and vigour, owing to 
the quantity of previously generated sap, being much greater in 
the bulb than in the seed. The bulbs, thus raised, often exceed 
considerably five inches in diameter, and being more mature, 
they are with more certainty preserved, in a state of perfect 
soundness, through the winter than those raised from seed in a 
single season. The same effects are, in some measure, produced 
by sowing the seeds in August, as is often done ; but the crops 
often perish during the winter, and the ground becomes com- 
pressed and saddened (to use an antiquated term) by the winter 
rains; and I have in consequence always found that any given 
weight of this plant may be obtained, with less expense to the 
grower, by the mode of culture I recommend, than by any 
other which I have seen practised. 
198 Stems of Fruit Trees, Protection of. The blossoms 
of fruit trees fall off abortively in some seasons, and produce 
much fruit in others, in which the weather, relatively to tem- 
perature and moisture, has been nearly the same during the 
flowering season of such trees, and it is in very favourable, or 
very unfavourable seasons only, that the gardener can, with 
198, Knight’s Papers, p. 236. 
