Allium satirum, Garlic, has been found wild in Sicily, and some parts of Provence. Its stem is simple, erect, and furnished with flat, narrow, pointed leaves ; the flower-heads have usually a number of little bulbs lying among the flowers, which are white or pinkish ; the bulbs are remarkable for the development of the greater part of the axillary buds of their scales; these buds grow rapidly, and acquire a bulbous state, and form what are called the cloves of the garlic, which are the parts employed in cooking.
Allium ophioscorodon, Rocamhole, or Spanish Shallot, is very slightly different from garlic, being chiefly distinguished by its larger size in all the parts, and by the upper part of its stem being generally twisted spirally just before flowering. It is a native of most parts of the south of Europe.
consist of flat, fertile, alluvial land, with a gravelly bottom, the gnulurd creation of the steam. Sometimes the Connie of the river is no tortuous that two points, A and no, may be within a few hundred yards of each other, and yet., following the line of the stream, they may be some silos asunder. In this case, the narrow neck of land is acted upon doubly ; for the force of the water is directed against it on each lode In time this isthmus is breached, and the river either flows entirely through the new channel, or, dividing, forms the land A into an island.
Such tortuous minas, when they are cat through solid rock, as in the cane of the Moselle, whose banks are sometimes 600 feet high, are among the strongest proofs of the destructive power of running water, for no sudden deluge, however powerful, could have scooped out such a trough ; and that a cleft of such a nature should be occasioned by any disruption of the earth's crust, is not lean improbable. Moro midden and therefore more striking instances of the waste of the land occur where n river flows through a lake, and by its wasting action CAll:kfa a breaking-down of the barrier. We have already alluded to the bursting of a lake in the valley of Bagnes in Switzerland. That flood was produced by the melting of ice, which, falling in successive seasons from neighbouring glaciers, had formed so continuous a mass its to dam np the water of a stream which flowed in the bottom of the valley. If the barrier of a lake consist of strata of rock, supported by beds of clay or sand, and if, by any change of circumstances, the running water get access to this inferior bed, and gradually wash it away, the auperineumbent rock, thus undermined, suddenly breaks down, and devastation and ruin overwhelm the country below.
The distance to which the detached fragments are carried depends upon the volume of water, and the !intm of the ground over which it flows. The torrents from the south-western Alps, rushing over a steep uninterrupbal slope, transport large blocks to the sea ; but a river that runs through a long stretch of level country deposits the grosser matter in the upper part of its course, and carries to its mouth only that which is more easily held in suspension. The larger stones, after being detached from their parent rock, have therefore to undergo an intermedinte process of abrasion, by being rubbed against each other in the bed of the stream before their particles are finally committed to the deep. If n river pads through a lake in its course, the solid matter will be deposited in that trough until it has filled it up; and if the lake be very large, even the lighter particles will have time to fall, and the water will flow out clear from the other extremity. The Lake of Geneva tamale a remarkable instance of this process; for the IthOne, where it enters, is extremely turbid ; but at Geneva, where it leaves the lake, it is beautifully transparent. At the upper end there is a tract of alluvial land nearly 8 miles in length, which has been gradually formed by the deposit', from the river ; and some measure of its progress is obtained by the change in the situation of the town of Port Vallaim, which was once at the wntcr'n edge, but in the course of about 800 years has been left a mile and a half inland. Other torrents, on both rides of the lake, likewise pour in large quantities of solid matter ; and thus, although from its great depth a long period must elapse if the present order of nature remains undisturbed, the Leman Lake will be converted into green meadows, and cattle will graze where there are now 160 fathoms of water. Nor is this an extravagant expectation, or more than has taken place elsewhere in past times. The vast fertile valley between the Vosges Mountains and those of the Black Forest, through which the Rhine flows for above 100 miles, between Strasburg and Worms, without falling more than two feet in a mile, is in great part covered with alluvium, and is filled to an unknown depth under the soil with sand and gravel similar to that now transported by the Rhone. There is every reason to believe that this valley was at one time the site of a lake far larger than that of Geneva, and probably quite as deep.