At the November meeting of the Summit County (Ohio) Horticultural Society, Mrs. Claypole gave an interesting address on the Onion, from which we make the following extract:

" It is plain by this time that our visitant is possessed with the idea that there must have been a first onion behind all those of which he hears, and that he will give us no rest until we can put it before him and say, ' Behold, here is the native plant which by wise cultivation has developed these handsome bulbs which you see.' Be the search for this first onion then long or short, it seems that we must undertake it. Let us take the first step in the inquiry. Shall we find this native plant, this Allium cepa, this parent of all cultivated onions on this continent? No; it has been sought for, but America is not rich in species of Allium, and Allium cepa is nowhere to be found. Cortez, when relating incidents of his brilliant conquests in Mexico, is reported by Humboldt to have said that he saw onions in the market-place of the ancient Tenochtitlan, and that the Mexicans called these onions xonacatl. But careful enquiry shows that the name xonacatl does not apply to our cultivated species of Allium. In the seventeenth century only one single Allium was reported from Jamaica, and that was our species - Allium cepa - and it was in the garden with other vegetables from Europe. Acosta, in his ' Natural History of the Indies,' says expressly that the onions of Peru were brought from Europe. To Europe, then, we must go on the track of the first onion.

Any European will tell us that onions have always been cultivated there. But aware that our Visitor will inquire into that 'always,' we will see if we can find out what it means, so far as England is concerned.

" Shakespeare mentions the onion. In the ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' Bottom, a weaver, giving final directions to Quince, the carpenter, Flute, the bellows mender, Snout, the tinker, and Starveling, the tailor - all humble folks, who are about to present a play before the Duke and his party, after telling them to go home and attend to this, that and the other, says :

" 'And most dear actors eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear thern say it is a sweet comedy.'

"When Helena, at the close of 'All's Well that Ends Well,' finds at the same time her husband and her mother, the old Lord Lafen exclaims:

"'Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon, Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher; so; I thank thee; wait on me home, I'll make sport with thee.'

"In the introduction to the 'Taming of the Shrew,' the lord, sending instructions to his page to enact the part of wife to the old drunkard whom they are about to befool, says:

"'Bid him shed tears, And if the boy have not a woman's gift To rain a shower of commanded tears, An onion will do well for such a shift.'

"Enobarbus, comforting Anthony on the death of his wife, Fulvia, says :

" 'The tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.'

"And later the same Enobarbus exclaims on an occasion when he deems it well to turn the current of pathetic thoughts - "'Look, they weep, and I - am onion-eyed.'

"Now, I think it must be conceded that the joke connecting a mere show of grief with the use of an onion is old and well worn - requiescat in pace. But let us remember that at the time when the potato was a newcomer into Europe, the onion and its properties were so widely known, and so familiar to all, that Shakespeare could rely on the word to bring - even to the dull brains in the pit - a vivid picture of tears without woe.

" Shall we find our first onion in England? No, its name tells us that it is no native. Onion is merely the English way of pronouncing the French 'oignon,' and by the French, at some time or other, the bulb was brought into England.

" Chaucer, writing five hundred years ago, mentions the onion as a well known domestic vegetable. Another three hundred years takes us back to the Norman Conquest, and I think we may take another two hundred and say that a thousand years ago the onion was making its way into England. A thousand years sweeps away the history of England and leaves a small island torn with the strife of its recent Saxon conquerors and harassed with sea pirates, Alfred striving to bring unity from discord, and the dreaded Danes or Red Shanks seizing more and more of the fertile land. An island almost unknown to the nations on the Continent who have enough to do to hold their own from each other and foreign foes, but who, nevertheless, not unmindful of seed time and harvest, gather in annual crops of the juicy bulbs we call the onion.

"Another thousand years and Britain is an island lying far, far away from civilization. Vague rumors of a land beyond the sea there may be, but vagueness lends terror and makes the island the home of monsters and ogres. And Europe? Misery untold. Wherever nature has been kind war has laid waste. Rome is pushing her conquest on the Rhone, and hordes of hungry Teutons are pouring into Gaul from the Northeast, while as many Cimbrians are making their way into the South through the passes of the Alps. Italy itself is threatened, and fear of foreign invasion arrests for the moment the strife of parties at home. And yet somewhere in Italy some one is finding leisure to cultivate the onion, and many varieties are grown for the rich men's tables and gourmands discuss the flavor and call their favorites by the names of countries. The Cretan, Samothracian, Cyprian and so on.

" Two thousand years have taken us back to the border land between history ancient and modern. Another thousand and a few more and we shall hear the groans of the Hebrews in Egypt as they drag the heavy stones for the massive forts of Rameses and Pithom or make their daily tale of bricks under the sharp gaze of guards who stand over them with rods. In vain they petition for relief. The work is pressing. Useless are all attempts at revolt. The power of Rameses is great; his vigilance leaves no loophole for escape. But death, greater than Rameses, takes the mighty conqueror and his son and Menephthah rules in his stead. Then a successful conspiracy is made and the Hebrews, under Moses and Aaron throw off the yoke of Pharaoh and defeat him on the shores of the Red Sea and we hear the songs of triumph of these emancipated slaves as they take their first steps in freedom.

"But now unthought of difficulties appear - the journey to the land of Promise is not one long holiday of pleasure. Some present privations seem harder to bear than the late fearful slavery, and praising the good old times they revile Moses and ask him bitterly, ' who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks and the onions and the garlic'

"And these onions whose flavor could be better remembered than the hardships of tyranny; can they be of the same species as the onions exhibited here? Certainly they are, they are grown in Egypt to this day and called now by the very name used for them by masters and slaves when Israel was there in bondage.

"More than this, the designs on the ancient monuments show us often this very onion. For the onion was highly prized by the Egyptians and a variety was grown so excellent in all its properties that they worshiped it as a divinity. Shall we then find our first onion in Egypt? No, there is no native plant there which could have produced it and as long as we can find a trace of it in Egypt it is a cultivated plant and highly cultivated too. How long has it been cultivated there? Three thousand years, four thousand, five, six, seven thousand. Seven thousand years ago when a few wretched savages scattered over Europe were tearing from nature and each other a bare subsistence, in the Valley of the Nile the Egyptians were enjoying' a happy, peaceful and sometimes jolly life.' The tombs of Memphis are covered with pictures of feasts and games, dances and boat tournaments; poets are chanting verses and girls are dancing with hair dressed up with plates of gold. Seven thousand years have passed since the building of the first pyramid.

Yet even then Egypt was an old country; its people civilized; its architecture grand in idea and perfect in execution; its language not only formed but reduced to writing; its agricultural life was rich with oxen, asses, dogs and monkeys, antelopes and gazelles, geese, ducks, swans and slaves of Numidia. Egyptian history begins before the building of this pyramid perhaps three thousand years, and behind that again there must be an immensely older history, making the emergence of this civilization from the savage life of the cave-dweller. Where are we now?

"Ten thousand years away from the life of today - far away in Egypt, with the rich farmers on the banks of the Nile. Whether or not we shall meet our onion there, who shall say? Some time, in that remote past it was brought into Egypt, and it was brought from India.

" History can tell us no more. The sacred writing of the Hindus, the oldest records of the Chinese, mention the onion, but always as a cultivated plant.

" If we would find our first onion we must leave history and try some other line of inquiry. Let us join the party of some exploring botanist, and with him search Europe, Africa and Asia for a specimen of the native onion, which some time in the long-forgotten past was deemed worthy of cultivation. Our search, like our history, gradually narrows itself, until we find ourselves climbing the mountains of Afghanistan and Beloochistan, and exploring the table lands behind the Hindu Kush Mountains. And there, in the birthplace of our race, we find our onion - the Allium cepa - from which have sprung all the onions grown all over this wide world".

[It would add greatly to our knowledge if some one familiar with Mexico would tell us what the Mexican onions, as reported by Cortez, were. There are several native species of onion, and these, though very different from the garden onion, might be capable of being improved, and perhaps were improved; or the onion of Cortez may have been a species lost in a wild state, just as our garden onion seems to have become long before modern history began, though Mrs. Clay-pole indicates that the original has been identified in the mountains of Afghanistan.

As Mrs. Claypole says, the kind of onion known to the Mexicans as xonacatl is certainly not the European onion. Hernandez, who wrote on the flora of Mexico, in 1790, says that the xonacatl is a species of onion, with a two-cleft or " bifid root." The term seems to be a generic one, representing rather the odor than the bulb. Quahonacatl is a shrub with leaves "like a lemon," but " with the taste and smell of garlic or onion." There is an immense field for intelligent research as American inquisitiveness presses on Mexico. - Ed. G. M].