Such was formerly my opinion.[253] The facts published since 1855 do not destroy my doubts, but, on the contrary, justify them. Regel, in 1875, in his monograph of the genus Allium, declares he has only seen the shallot as a cultivated species. Aucher Eloy has distributed a plant from Asia Minor under the name of _A. ascalonicum_, but judging from my specimen this is certainly not the species. Boissier tells me that he has never seen _A. ascalonicum_ in the East, and it is not in his herbarium. The plant from the Morea which bears this name in the flora of Bory and Chaubard is quite a different species, which he has named _A. gomphrenoides_. Baker,[254] in his review of the Alliums of India, China, and Japan, mentions _A. ascalonicum_ in districts of Bengal and of the Punjab, from specimens of Griffith and Aitchison; but he adds, “They are probably cultivated plants.” He attributes to _A. ascalonicum Allium sulvia_, Ham., of Nepal, a plant little known, and whose wild character is uncertain. The shallot produces many bulbs, which may be propagated or preserved in the neighbourhood of cultivation, and thus cause mistakes as to its origin. Finally, in spite of the progress of botanical investigations in the East and in India, this form of Allium has not been found wild with certainty. It appears to me, therefore, more probable than ever that it is a modification of _A. Cepa_, dating from about the beginning of the Christian era—a modification less considerable than many of those observed in other cultivated plants, as, for instance, in the cabbage. +Rocambole+—_Allium scorodoprasum_, Linnæus.