The specimens collected by Anglo-Indian botanists, of which Wallich gave the first idea, are now better known. Stokes discovered _Allium Cepa_ wild in Beluchistan. He says, “wild on the Chehil Tun.” Griffith brought it from Afghanistan and Thomson from Lahore, to say nothing of other collectors, who are not explicit as to the wild or cultivated nature of their specimens.[231] Boissier possesses a wild specimen found in the mountainous regions of the Khorassan. The umbels are smaller than in the cultivated plant, but there is no other difference. Dr. Regel, jun., found it to the south of Kuldscha, in Western Siberia.[232] Thus my former conjectures are completely justified; and it is not unlikely that its habitation extends even as far as Palestine, as Hasselquist said. The onion is designated in China by a single sign (pronounced _tsung_), which may suggest a long existence there as an indigenous plant.[233] I very much doubt, however, that the area extends so far to the east. Humboldt[234] says that the Americans have always been acquainted with onions, in Mexican _xonacatl_. “Cortes,” he says, “speaking of the comestibles sold at the market of the ancient Tenochtillan, mentions onions, leeks, and garlic.” I cannot believe, however, that these names applied to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloane, in the seventeenth century, had only seen one _Allium_ cultivated in Jamaica (_A. Cepa_), and that was in a garden with other European vegetables.[235] The word _xonacatl_ is not in Hernandez, and Acosta[236] says distinctly that the onions and garlics of Peru are of European origin. The species of the genus Allium are rare in America. +Spring+, or +Welsh Onion+—_Allium fistulosum_, Linnæus. This species was for a long time mentioned in floras and works on horticulture as of unknown origin; but Russian botanists have found it wild in Siberia towards the Altaï mountains, on the Lake Baikal in the land of the Kirghis.[237] The ancients did not know the plant.[238] It must have come into Europe through Russia in the Middle Ages, or a little later. Dodoens,[239] an author of the sixteenth century, has given a figure of it, hardly recognizable, under the name of _Cepa oblonga_. +Shallot+—_Allium ascalonicum_, Linnæus. It was believed, according to Pliny,[240] that this plant took its name from Ascalon, in Judæa; but Dr. Fournier[241] thinks that the Latin author mistook the meaning of the word _Askalônion_ of Theophrastus. However this may be, the word has been retained in modern languages under the form of _échalote_ in French, _chalote_ in Spanish, _scalogno_ in Italian, _Aschaluch_ or _Eschlauch_ in German. In 1855 I had spoken of the species as follows:[242]—