s. All the members
of the onion tribe yield a heavy volatile oil when distilled with
water--an oil so pungent and concentrated that an ounce of it will
represent the essence of forty pounds of garlic. This oil is a compound
of sulphur, carbon, and hydrogen, and is called sulphide of allyl,
because of its origin in the allium tribe. It is the more volatile,
sulphurous fumes of this oil which ascend as an onion is cut that cause
the eyes to water, just as sulphur fumes do anywhere. It is the less
volatile portion of the oil which gives such permanence and adhesiveness
to the onion odour as to render a knife that has been used to cut one
offensive for a long time afterwards, in spite of washing.

In the Arabian Nights the purveyor for the Sultan of Casgar tells a
story of a man who lost his thumbs and great-toes through eating garlic.
This was a youth who had married a beauteous bride, but was unfortunate
enough on his marriage-day to eat of a dish strongly flavoured with
garlic. The lady was so annoyed that she ordered the bridegroom to be
bound, and his thumbs and toes cut off, as punishment for presuming to
come to her without first purifying his fingers. Ever afterwards the
unfortunate husband always washed his hands one hundred and twenty times
with alkali, after dining off a garlic ragout, for, of course, he did
not use a fork. But had he known Menander the Greek's receipt, he might
have saved his digits. This was to roast beetroot on hot embers for the
removal of the odour of garlic.

It might be more generally known that if either walnuts, or raw parsley,
be eaten along with onions, the smell of the latter will be destroyed,
and digestion of them assisted.

There is, one must admit, a certain association of vulgarity with the
onion. It is a valuable food, and an indispensable accessory to the
culinary artist; but as used by many people it is not suggestive of
refinement. And yet the bulb has not only an honourable character--it
has a sort of sacred history.

Both Pliny and Juvenal, among old writers, and many Egyptologists of our
own time and country, have recorded that the ancient Egyptians
worshipped the onion. It is true that Wilkinson, who wrote on the
Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, doubts the evidence of
this; but he adds that the onion was admitted as a common offering on
every altar, and that the priests were forbidden to eat it. In Ellis's
History of Madagascar it is noted that the Malaga