BULBS, TUBERS, AND ROOTSTOCKS. Among the earliest of the spring flowers which make our gardens and public parks beautiful are the gor geous tulips, crocuses, and hyacinths, which boldly thrust their leaves above the ground and often burst into splendid blossom before the snows have entirely vanished before the mild breezes of spring.
What is the secret which enables these and other flowers to beat their rivals in the race to greet the spring? It is that they grow from bulbs, or bulblike stems, in which food has been stored through the long winters to give to the young plants a quick start over other plants which have to draw their food from the soil as they need it.
Let us see how this food is stored. Cut a tulip bulb in half, or an onion, which is also a bulb. You will see that it is made up of a number of thick fleshy layers, protected by dead tough papery leaves outside. In the center are thick little bud scales, from which the new plants grow. The broad surrounding scale-leaves, as they are called, contain the food for the young plants held in storage until they need it for their growth and development.
orchids, tulips, and lilacs grow wild on the mountain slopes of the southern third of the country, and in the valley to the north of the Balkan Mountains great fields of cultivated roses furnish the world's supply of the expensive perfume, attar of roses.
These fields of roses are the most gorgeous sight in Bulgaria. Before sunrise the women in their bright colored gaily embroidered jackets and aprons, over their white lace-trimmed petticoats, are to be seen at work gathering the petals of the great Damask roses.
Many of the men, too, are gaily adorned with bright jackets over their white trousers.
This little Balkan state is a nation of peasants.
Fully three-fourths of the people are engaged in agri culture, and most of these own their own farms.
True, the farms are not large, very few of them having more than 18 acres; but the farmer has in addition the right to pasture his cattle and to cut his wood on the common pasture and timber lands. The farming methods are primitive and the tools crude, but by hard work the farmer is able to raise more than he needs; so the nation as a whole exports wheat, tobacco, and some fruit.
The late ruler of Bulgaria, Czar Ferdinand, the " Balkan Fox," gained for himself an unenviable reputation as the " Judas of the Slays" by the part which his country played in the Second Balkan War and the World War of 1914-18. In the latter conflict he allied his country with Germany and Austria, and with the old enemy of the Christian Slav states—the Turks—against Russia, by whose aid Bulgaria had won her independence. When the cause of the Cen tral Powers collapsed in the autumn of 1918, Czar Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his son, Boris III.
Naturally Bulgaria fared badly in the peace treaty.
Its territory after the close of the war was about 40,000 square miles, and its population, about 4,500 000.
(See map under Balkan Peninsula.)