| Cape of Good Hope. 
[ retreat See Se 
576 BULBINE. 
the sets from which they grew are brought up 
in such a state of comparative conservation as 
to indicate that replenishment had long been 
carried on, and that a large proportion of the 
nourishing juices from the roots appeared to have 
passed through the sets? If all bulbs and tubers 
were viewed as not only the seeds or organic 
originators of plants, but as the elaborators or 
stomachs of their root-received food, they would, 
in many instances, experience different treat- 
ment from cultivators than at present, and 
many of the risks, accidents, and deteriorations 
of their culture would probably be lessened or 
even altogether avoided. See the article TusEr- 
ous Roots. ; 
All bulbs, when kept excluded from the atmo- 
sphere, are singularly tenacious of vitality. Either 
a bulb, or a large seed so like a bulb as readily to 
_ be mistaken for one, was found, about seventeen 
| years ago, in the hand of a newly unswathed 
Egyptian mummy, and must have remained in 
that position during at least two thousand years; 
and yet, when placed in the soil, it rapidly 
sprouted and produced a plant. Some bulbs, as 
those of several species of Ad/iwm, are used for 
culinary purposes ; some, as certain varieties of 
scilla and colchicum, are used in medicine ; and 
a vast number enjoy peculiar care and brilliant 
| reputation in the fascinating art of floriculture. 
Bulbous-rooted flowering plants, in fact, are at 
once numerous, conspicuous, and exquisitely 
beautiful or gorgeous members of both the green- 
house and the parterre; and, were all other 
flowering-plants annihilated or forgotten, this 
class alone would fill the hearts of the most en- 
| thusiastic florists with delight, and be an ample 
memorial of the floral glories of paradise. The 
“jilies of the field,” the amaryllides, tulips, hya- 
cinths, and many others are familiar examples of 
the combined magnificence and loveliness of tu- 
berous-rooted plants. 
BULBINE. A genus of ornamental plants, of 
the asphodel family. Though named from a word 
which signifies a bulb, only a small proportion of 
the species are bulbous-rooted. The annual spe- 
cies, Bulbine annua, is a hardy annual from the 
It has a height of only 
eight or nine inches; its leaves are somewhat 
long, succulent, tapering, and flattened on their 
upper side; and its flowers are yellow, grow in 
loose spikes, and flourish in May and June. This 
species and about ten others were formerly in- 
cluded in the genus anthericum. The bisulcate 
is a hardy bulbous-rooted species, with yellow 
flowers, and about a foot high, from New Holland. 
| About twenty other species have been introduced 
to Great Britain, some from New Holland, but 
| most from the Cape of Good Hope; and all these 
require greenhouse culture, while the greater 
number are evergreen herbaceous plants of about 
a foot in height. 
BULBOCASTANUM. See Earru-Novr. 
BULBOCODIUM. A small genus of hardy, | planted for ornament in shrubberies. 
BULLACE-TREE. 
ornamental bulbous-rooted plants, of the melan- 
thium tribe. The spring species, Bulbocodium ver- 
num, is a native of the Pyrenees, and was intro- 
duced thence to Great Britain, during the first 
half of the 17th century. It has a height of only 
three or four inches; and produces a purple 
flower, somewhat like the crocus, in February 
and March. It loves a shady situation, in peat 
mould.—The party-coloured species, Bulbocodium 
versicolor, called in the Botanical Register, Col- 
chicum versicolor, was recently introduced from 
the Crimea, and blooms in autumn.—Bulbocodi- 
um is also the name of a hardy ornamental spe- 
cies of narcissus, which was brought from Portu- 
gal in the former part of the 17th century, and 
which produces a yellow flower contemporane- 
ously with the common daffodil. 
BULL. The full-grown male of the ox species. 
A young male of this species, while sucking, is 
called a bull-calf; from one year to two years of 
age, a stirk or a yearling bull; from two to six 
years of age, respectively a three-year-old, a four- 
year-old, a five-year-old, and a six-year-old bull ; 
and after six years of age, an old bull. A cas- 
trated male is called, after the first year, a stot- 
calf or stirk-stot, and then a steer; and at four 
years of age, he is called a bullock. 
A bull serves chiefly for the propagation of his 
species; and though he may be subjected to the 
yoke, yet he cannot be depended on for working 
quietly, and may, at times, do enormous mis- 
chief by the self-willed and even furious use of 
his prodigious strength. Heis naturally stubborn, 
intractable, and fierce; and, during the bulling 
season, he is absolutely uncontrollable, and often 
ferocious and truculent. A herd of bulls would 
give utter defiance to all skill of man to tame or 
manage them; and even a single bull is not un- 
frequently an object of just terror to a farm or a 
district. But the male of the ox species appears 
to possess all his obstinacy and fierceness in 
strict connexion with the peculiar impulses of 
his sex ; and when he is castrated at an early age, 
he, without any damage to his constitution or 
deterioration of his strength, becomes compara- 
tively tractable, patient, docile, and mild, and 
acquires increasing weight, bulk, unwieldiness, 
and adaptation to the labours of coarse farm 
draught. See the articles Ox and Carrin. 
BULLACE-TREE,—botanically Prunus insiti- 
tia. A wild, deciduous fruit-tree, of the plum 
genus. It grows indigenously in the hedges and 
woods of Great Britain; it usually attains a 
height of about twenty feet; its branches are 
round, irregularly spreading, and generally tip- 
ped with straight, sharp thorns; its blossoms are 
white and rosaceous, and appear in April; and 
its fruit varies in both size and flavour according 
to the varieties of the tree,—some is more or 
less good when dressed, but most becomes much 
deteriorated when not eaten immediately after 
being gathered. The bullace-tree is sometimes 
The prin- 
~ 
