You must observe that there are three kinds of plants which are said to have bulbous roots: those which are solid, and which should be properly called corms, such as the crocus, the corn-flag, and many of the half-hardy plants with similar half-tubular flowers; the tunicated bulbs, which consist of a number of distinct layers, called tunics, that may be peeled off, such as the onion, the hyacinth, and the tulip; and the scaly bulbs such as the lily. Now the real roots of all these plants are the long fibres sent down by the lower part of the bulb, which may be seen plainly in hyacinths grown in glasses, and in any of the kinds if taken up while in a growing state; and what is called the bulb is, in all the corms, only a contracted stem; but, in the tunicated and scaly bulbs, the bulbous part is formed of a contracted stem and metamorphosed leaves. If you will take the trouble to examine a hyacinth, you will find at the base of the bulb a flat fleshy substance, called the root-plate, and this is, in fact, the contracted stem of the plant; while the tunics are metamorphosed leaves. In the scaly bulbs the stem is plainly perceptible in the centre, and the scales are evidently metamorphosed leaves. You will easily remember these distinctions, and you will find it useful to attend to them in cultivating your garden, as all plants having corms never flower well till they have been allowed to form a mass, which they will not do till they have been in the ground three or four years. Many persons fancy that the Cape bulbs require to be taken up every year, but this is altogether a mistake: all the kinds of gladiolus, ixia, tritonia, and other similar plants, will live in the open ground, and flower well, if suffered to grow in masses, which would be killed by a single English winter if planted separately. The finest bed of the scarlet gladiolus I ever saw was at Blair-Adam, near Stirling, where it was suffered to remain year after year without alteration; and the Honourable and Reverend William Herbert, now Dean of Manchester, in his celebrated work on the Amaryllidàceæ, states that he has had beds of gladiolus, ixia, tritonia, and other Cape bulbs, at Spofforth in Yorkshire, which have remained for several years, without protection, in the open ground. Some persons say that, by manuring the beds every year, tulips and hyacinths may also be grown in the same beds without taking up, for several years in succession; but this I have never seen tried.