July
1926
Together with an Arab guide I went deep into the desert in an automobile equipped with special wide tires for driving in the sand. We drove in the direction toward Touggourt, which was interesting mainly because of the stops in the scattered villages along the road. About a dozen km apart there were small oases with the obligatory groups of date palms and a few houses. There is a special research station in the desert for the cultivation and breeding of date palms. However, all this is of a primitive nature. After studying the cultivation of date palms in Algeria and California, it seemed to me that during the last couple of decades the American introducer Swingle and his friends have achieved more in America than the Arabs and the French during all their time spent in the Saharan oases.
During spring the desert is covered by beautiful but ephemeral vegetation. In July all was bare and dead there. After travelling about 150 km we decided to hurry back to Biskra, where the grain was ripening in the mountain areas. I resolved to make an excursion with Professor Ducellier for a few days to the tribes in the Kabyle mountains of Algeria. The route, planned by Professor Ducellier, would demonstrate the wild flora as well as the plants cultivated by the Kabyles tribesmen.
The first excursions among the fields and vegetable gardens of the coastal belt of the Mediterranean resulted in observations of exceptional importance. While visiting the Arabian markets and neighborhood vegetable gardens I came across enormous bulbs of ordinary onions (Allium cepa) each weighing up to 2 kg. This was neither a coincidence nor something paradoxical. Beans, lentils, peas, wheat, barley, flax, wild carrots and wild vetch are all distinguished by unusual dimensions in the Mediterranean area: flowers, seeds and fruits are large. This applies to the common onion as well. The gigantism of individual organs presents a special morphological aspect, which is general all over the Mediterranean area, as I was able to ascertain later on. Of course, man plays a great role in this, as do the high level and the antiquity of the agriculture. On the other hand, natural selecrion has undoubtedly also favoured the development and selection of such large forms. 
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