Garlic, the bulb of the allium sativum, a plant of the same genus as the onion (A. cepa) and the leek (A. porrum). The plant is perennial, and grows wild in the southern parts of Europe, but its native place is not certainly known. In most countries it is cultivated, and has been esteemed from the remotest times as an article of food or as a condiment. The plant has flat leaves, somewhat like those of the leek, and at the base a bulb which is made up of five or six bulblets, called "cloves," which are of an oblong shape, flattened, and pointed at the apex; they are enclosed in numerous layers of thin, papery skin, which is usually white, but in one of the garden varieties rose-colored. The flower stem is about 18 inches high, and bears an umbel of pink or purplish flowers, which are often intermixed with small bulbs. The bulbs arc taken up attached to the stem, and when dried in the sun are tied together in bunches like onions. Garlic has a strong peculiar odor called alliaceous, and a bitter and acrid taste. A highly viscid juice may be expressed from it, so tenacious that when dried it makes a cement for porcelain. By distilling the bulbs with water a very volatile essential oil is obtained, which possesses in a high degree the peculiar properties of the bulbs.

It is of so acrid a nature that it will even raise blisters upon the skin. Sulphur is detected in this oil, combined with a radical called allyle, consisting of C6H5. When garlic is used as food or medicine, and even when applied externally, this oil is rapidly absorbed, and its presence is soon perceived in the breath and in the secretions of the body. Its moderate use is thought to be beneficial for its stimulant properties in quickening the circulation, exciting the nervous system, etc. Asa medicine it is most employed in external applications, as a sedative in fevers, and in nervous and spasmodic disorders of children.-A number of species of allium are indigenous to this country, and are known as wild garlic and wild leek; one (A. vineale), introduced from Europe, is now thoroughly naturalized in the older states, and is a troublesome weed. It grows frequently in pastures, and imparts a most disagreeable odor to the milk and butter from the animals that eat it; when it occurs in wheat fields it seriously injures the flour unless the grain is cleaned with great care. A. moly, called garden garlic, has long been cultivated as an ornamental plant.

It bears an umbel of large golden yellow flowers about a foot high; its treatment is the same as that of tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs.