and a very large part of them are fit to go into plantations at once; but this cannot be the case if the plants be sowed thickly.

"I have never sowed locusts till the month of April, or very late in March; because, by soaking, they are made to come up in the space of a fortnight, and they should not come up till the sharp frosts be all gone. But when seeds have been soaked in this manner, there is great care required to keep them from the sun and the wind; they should, therefore, be covered as quickly as possible after they have been scattered on the bed, and the earth that goes on them should be made very fine. The covering must not be more than an inch deep, and must be laid on very evenly, and with the greatest possible care, so that no openings may be left for the sun or wind to find access through. If the weather be dry, as it ought to be for the work of sowing, water the beds gently, with a fine-rose watering-pot, the second day after sowing; but not by any means while the earth is fresh at top, for if earth be freshly moved when you water, it runs together, and binds over the top, where it forms a shell, which is difficult for the heads of the plants to penetrate.

"When a locust-tree is a foot and a-half or two feet high, it is quite fit to go into any plantation, even amongst other trees; for if cut down in the month of April, the year after planting, or even in May, it will soon overtop other trees; but if the plants be really too small to put out at once, they should be assorted with care, the stout ones in one lot, and the weak ones in another; and thus precisely after the manner of the ash, put into the nursery, the roots having first been properly pruned."―(Woodlands, par. 384, 5, 6, and 388.)

In 1831, I made several experiments with the seeds of Robinia, Pseudo-acacia, and Gleditschia triacanthos, and the results lead me to doubt the safety of employing boiling-hot water. I immersed several portions in water at 125°, 140°, 150°, 170°, and 210°, also a few seeds in a cold, weak solution of chloruret of lime. Those soaked in the last fluid, never vegetated: the vital principle was extinct. (I have lately found oxalic acid a fatal application.) Of the seeds exposed to 210°, very few germinated; but all the others, those particularly in water at 140°, rose freely.

I tried unprepared seeds in the open ground, but the success was little, because the plants were, no doubt, bitten off, underground; but I was most fortunate with a number of robinia seeds which I sowed, without preparation, in a 'thirty-two' pot of very light soil, placing the pot in a melon pit, wherein the heat seldom was less than 60°. The pot was filled, and in transplanting subsequently, I lost very few of the seedlings.

647. Cultivation of the Evergreen Oak (Quercus Ilex), and of the

American live oak (Q. phellos virens, or Q. Molucca of Abercrombie). These trees can be raised from acorns only; their propagation is thus generally described by Abercrombie.

"The propagation of all the sorts of oak, is by sowing the acorns either as soon as ripe in November, or preserved in sand till February; and having prepared four-feet wide beds of light earth, sow the acorns either in drills two inches deep, and half a foot asunder, or by broad-cast, previously trimming two inches of earth off the surface into the alley (see 645); then scatter the acorns evenly in the bed, moderately thick; press them into the earth with the spade, and cover them with the earth two inches deep: they will come up in the spring; and when the plants are one or two years old, plant them out in rows, previously pruning their tap root, and side shoots; the rows two feet and a-half asunder, and let them be trained to single stems, cleared from side shoots, preserving the top shoots always entire to aspire in height." — (Dictionary— Quercus.)

The live oak-Mr. Cobbett observes-of all the oaks, "is the one of the most value. It is evergreen, has smooth oblong leaves, of a deep green, upon the upper side, and whitish on the under side. This tree grows well in England, and ripens its seeds in England; there are several trees of it in the king's gardens at Kew, and I have seen acorns upon them in a very perfect state."-" Michaux tells us that it flourishes best near the sea, and is proof against all storms and blasts-that it is sought after with most destructive eagerness, and he considers its disappearance from the United States within fifty years as nearly certain."-" It is a large and beautiful evergreen, not liable to be broken by winds, every twig being as tough as a bit of rope, never flinching at the frost and snow, and affording the completest of shelters to gardens and houses."

"The acorns are sowed in the same manner as directed for the sowing of the acorns of the common oak; they attain the height of from five to seven inches the first summer, and then they ought to be removed into a nursery.

"The live oak ought to stand two years in the nursery, for it will not make much of a shoot the first year; and then it ought to be planted out where it is to stand; for if planted out at a greater age, it will certainly be exposed to the risk of not taking root until the top of the plant be injured."-(Woodlands, par. 446, &c.)

SECTION II.

PART I.

NATURAL HISTORY AND CULTIVATION OF ESCULENT

VEGETABLES.

Subject 1. THE ONION :-Allium Cepa; Asphodeleo. Class vi. Order i. Hexandria Monogynia of Linnæus.

648. The genus Allium comprises seven British species; its essential generic character is, "a flower inferior, or below the fruit, without a calyx. Corolla, of six oval petals. Stamina, awl shaped, flattened. Stigma, acute. Seeds, angular."-(English Flora.)

The common bulbous onion, Loudon says, "is a biennial plant, supposed to be a native of Spain; though, as Neill observes, 'neither the native country, nor the date of its introduction into this island are correctly known.' It is distinguished from other alliaceous plants by its large fistular leaves, swelling stalk, coated bulbous root, and large globular head of flowers, which expand the second year in June and July."

649. The varieties are numerous, but I select the five following:

The "Silver-skinned; flat, middle-sized and shining; chiefly used for pickling.

"True Portugal onion of the fruiterers; large flatly globular, mild; it does not keep well.

"Spanish, Reading, white Portugal, Cambridge, Evesham, or sandy onion; large, flat, white tinged with green, mild.

"Strasburgh, Dutch or Flanders onion; oval, large and lightred, tinged with green, hardy, keeps well; of a strong flavour.

Underground or potatoe-onion; multiplies itself by the formation of the young bulbs on the parent root, and produces an ample crop below the surface; ripens early, but does not keep beyond February; flavour strong."-(Encyclopædia, p. 639.)

650. Estimate of Sorts.-The Strasburgh is to be chosen for the main crops, as being the best keeping onion, though the Spanish and Portugal kinds attain to great perfection, and yield large crops. The silver-skinned is to be preferred for pickling; and the potatoeonion is planted either as a curiosity, or to produce a winter crop.

651. Soil.-All the varieties, Abercrombie says, "grow freely

in any common good garden soil, in an open situation;" but I have observed that if onion seed be sown in March or April, and a very dry season, with acute, parching winds, set in soon afterwards, the young plants will not rise at all. I sowed twice, just before the drought which occurred in May 1829, set in, and did not obtain one plant till the rains of June moistened the soil; consequently, not one of the onions produced a bulb; but they remained green throughout the winter, and were taken up in February 1830, in a state fit to be used with salad herbs.

The following remarks and directions for the preparation of the soil, I conceive to be very judicious:-"The onion, 'to attain a good size, requires rich mellow ground on a dry sub-soil. If the soil be poor or exhausted, recruit it with a compost of fresh loam and wellconsumed dung, avoiding to use stable dung in a rank unreduced state. Turn in the manure to a moderate depth, and in digging the ground let it be broken fine. Grow picklers in poor light ground to keep them small.' The market gardeners at Hexham sow their onion-seed on the same ground for twenty or more years in succession, but annually manure the soil. After digging and levelling the ground, the manure, in a very rotten state, is spread upon it, the onion seed sown upon the manure, and covered with earth from the alleys, and the crops are abundant, and excellent in quality."— (Encyc. of Gard., 3815.)

I have recently practised the following method, from a hint which I received from a friend who had been an almost universal traveller. The ground is prepared as above described, with as much manure as can be well digged in; it is then beat to a solid surface, with a turf-beater, small lines are scratched upon the beaten surface, and in these lines the onion seed is sprinkled very thinly, that is, to the extent of three seeds in an inch space; the seeds are then covered by sifting a quarter of an inch of sand over the bed; finally, the surface is flattened by patting it with the back of the spade. Onions, so treated, become really surface bulbs, they expand regularly, and rarely grow "bottled," and deformed.

652. General Culture according to Abercrombie." All the varieties are raised annually from seed sown from about the 20th of February, to the end of March, for the main summer crops of keeping onions; but not later than the first fortnight of April, unless to produce small onions for pickling; and in autumn, some time in August, for smaller crops to stand till the spring, for green young

onions.

"Choose an open plat of the best, rich, light ground; to which, if some good rotten dung is added, and dug in one spade deep, it will be

of particular advantage. Then, while the ground is fresh dug, before it is rendered too dry, or wet, sow the seed, either broad-cast over the surface, in one continued plat, or divide the ground into four or five-feet wide beds, treading out foot-wide alleys between; observing, in either method, to sow the seed evenly with a spreading cast; then directly, if the ground be light and dry, tread the surface regularly, to settle it evenly, and the seeds equally where they fall, especially that sown in one continued plat, in order that when you stand to rake in the seeds, it may not sink into holes; and directly rake the ground regularly with an even hand, trimming off all stones; and for that sown in beds, you may previously, before you rake in the seeds, lightly pare the alleys with a spade an inch or two deep, casting the earth on the beds over the seeds; then rake, and clear the beds.

"The plants will come up in about three weeks. Keep them very clean from weeds, either by hand-weeding, or small hoeing, and in May and June, when advanced about four or five inches in growth, they must be thinned either by drawing as young onions, or by small hoeing with a two-inch hoe, in dry weather, cutting up all weeds, and thin out the plants to four or five inches distance, that they may have sufficient room to bulb."-(Pocket Dictionary'Allium.')

653. Onions should be sown in drills about an inch and a-half deep, the drills from eight inches to one foot asunder, according to the variety to be sown. They can then be kept clean by the Dutch hoe, passed very lightly between the rows. When onions are to be drawn young, two ounces of seed will be sufficient for a bed four feet by twenty-four; but when they are to remain for bulbing, one ounce may be allowed for a bed, five feet wide, by twenty-five feet long. Young onions will succeed if transplanted; and therefore in thinning the beds as before directed, if it be intended to form others, some well rooted young plants may be set out in rows six inches apart every way; but they will require occasional waterings if the weather be dry.

"M'Phael directs the seed-beds to be rolled after the seed is sown and the surface raked; that is, if it be not in too wet a state.

654. Transplanting young Bulbs.—“ Knight observes that every bulbous-rooted plant, and indeed every plant that lives longer than one year, generates in one season the sap or vegetable blood which composes the leaves and roots of the succeeding spring. 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,