CROSSING PALESTINE WILD PEA WITH COMMERCIAL TYPES. 427 
Results obtained by crossing a Wild Pea from Palestine with Commercial 
Types. By ArrHur W. Surréy, F.L.S., V.M.H. 
(PLATES 15-17 and 1 'Text-figure.) 
[Read 6th February, 1913.) 
Ir has fallen to my lot for very many years past to make a comparative study 
of all the leading kinds of vegetables grown either in England and on the 
Continent of Europe, or in America, and in doing so, it has been only natural 
to try to discover the wild forms from which the present highly developed 
types have originated. But though in some cases these wild forms, and the 
stages in their development, may be fairly well known, yet in many others 
it is not so, and we have to admit that the original wild form is either 
unknown, or, if known, that we are without any authentic record of the steps 
which have been taken, and the successive stages reached, in the long 
process of development. For instance, it is constantly said that the wild 
Brassica oleracea is the original form from which all our garden and farm 
varieties of Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Savoy, Kale, etc., are 
descended, but practically all records of the upward stages of development 
have been lost, and also the names of those by whom this task of development 
was effected. The Field and Garden Peas are also cases in point. The 
the Field Pea—is well-known as Pisum arvense; its flowers are 
former 
always bicoloured, purple and white, and the seeds have grey or brown seed- 
is equally 
coats, and are sometimes spotted. The latter—the Garden Pea 
well known as Pisum sativum ; the flowers are always white and the seed- 
coats white, yellow, or green, and in form the seeds are either * round ” or 
“ wrinkled.” 
The Field Peas are never eaten as “ green peas,” but are only grown for 
“corn,” i.e. their seeds are used in the dry state for feeding purposes, and 
the taste, when green or unripe, is always bitter. 
The Garden Peas are generally used as * green peas," i. e. when unripe, 
although a large quantity are also grown for boiling when ripe, and for 
producing pea-flour for culinary purposes. 
Of the Piswn arvense—or Field Pea—many herbarium specimens exist, 
collected in different parts of the world, but there is no variety in cultivation 
which has in recent years been raised from any wild form, nor is there any 
authentic record of the labours of those who presumably spent many years 
in obtaining the intermediate forms from which the varieties of to-day have 
originated. 
The same is true of the Garden Peas of to-day, with this exception, that 
whereas many specimens of the wild Pisum arvense have been collected, it is 
