10 



IIAllDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



tioned. The earliest notice is of those brought with 

 other provisions by the three loyal Israelites to King 

 David when he fled to Mahanaim from his rebellious 

 son Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 2S). The prophet 

 Ezekiel was commanded to make use of this pulse 

 as one of the ingredients of the bread he was to 

 eat for 390 days (Ezekiel iv. 9). According to 

 Rabbinical authority, it is stated that the much- 

 esteemed Egyptian bean was cultivated in Palestine, 

 and the same source of information declares that the 

 eating of this vegetable was interdicted to the high 

 priest on the day of atonement, from its decided 

 tendency to bring on sleep. The Moors, it is 

 believed, when they conquered Spain, introduced 

 the bean into that country, and from there or Portu- 

 gal the seed, some authors suppose, soon after was 

 imported into the British islands. Gerard states 

 that the garden bean is the same in all respects as 

 the field bean, the one having been improved only 

 by the fertility of the soil. Since that period, like 

 all other vegetables, it has ramified into many 

 varieties. Those cultivated for agriculture are 

 known as Faba vulgaris arvensis, or, as Loudon calls 

 them, Faba vulgaris equina, because they were 

 grown chiefly for the use of horses. There is a 

 strong and well-marked difference between these 

 and those cultivated for the garden, but both are 

 botanically included under one species. Of the 

 field beau there are at least twelve varieties, and of 

 the garden about twenty. The earliest garden bean 

 is a small-seeded kind, called the Maragan, which 

 was introduced into this country from a place of 

 that name on the coast of Morocco. The large 

 variety, called the " Windsor bean," is said to 

 have been first cultivated in that neighbourhood J 

 by some Dutch gardeners who came over at the 

 Revolution. 



There is a field near Eton still called the Dutch- 

 man's garden. This species of pulse is extremely 

 prolific when planted in a suitable soil; Phillips 

 tells us of a single Heligoland horse-bean, planted 

 in the garden of Beaulieu poor-house in the year 

 1821, that produced 126 pods, which, contained 399 

 good beans fit for seed ; and, had the plant not been 

 blown down by the wind in the midst of its bloom 

 there is reason to suppose it would have produced 

 nearly double that quantity. Beans were used 

 medicinally by the ancients : when bruised and 

 boiled with garlic, they were said to cure coughs 

 that were thought past remedy. 



Ever since the Middle Ages the bean has played a 

 very important part in the famous Twelfth-night 

 cake almost all over Europe. In Brand's " Popular 

 Antiquities," we read that the.choosing a person 

 as king or queen by a bean found in a piece of a 

 divided cake, was formerly a common Christmas 

 gambol in both the English universities. Thomas 

 Randolph in a curious letter to Dudley Lord 

 Leicester, dated Edinburgh, Jan. 15, 15G3, mentions 



Lady Flemyng being Queen of the Bene on Twelfth 

 day. 



Puller, in his "Worthies," mentions thatLeicester- 

 shire in his time was famous for beans, and under the 

 proverb Bean Belly Leicestershire he writes, "Those 

 in the neighbouring comities used to say, merrily, 

 ' Shake a Leicestershire yeoman by the collar, and 

 you shall hear the beans rattle in his belly.' But 

 those yeomen smile at what is said to rattle in their 

 bellies, whilst they know good silver ringeth in their 

 pockets." The poet Southey mentions that in clays 

 gone by the Mayors of Leicester used to be chosen 

 by a sow. The candidates sit in a semicircle, each 

 with his hat full of beans in his lap, and he was 

 elected Mayor from whose hat the sow eats first ! 

 (See " Common-place Book.") 



Beans are cultivated over many countries, as far 

 to the eastward as China and Japan ; they are very 

 generally used as an esculent in many parts of Africa, 

 particularly in Barbary, where it is usually full- 

 podded at the endof February, and continues in bear- 

 ing during the whole spring. W r hen stewed with oil 

 and garlic, beans form, according to Shaw, the prin- 

 cipal food of persons of all classes in that country. 

 It would appear from Dickson's "Husbandry of the 

 Ancients," that Pabawasderived from Haba, a town 

 of Etruria, where the bean was cultivated, and it is 

 the same as the small bean of our fields. 



H. G. Glasspoole. 



THE ANATOMY OP THE LARVA OP THE 

 CRANE-PLY. 



PURPOSE in the following to give an account 

 of so much of the organization of this creature 

 as I have been able to make out from observations 

 conducted at intervals during the past summer, pre- 

 mising that there are many points on which my 

 information is as yet obscure and defective, a de- 

 ficiency which I hope will be supplemented by the 

 remarks of others, or perhaps by myself, at a sub- 

 sequent period. 



The Crane-fly, or "Daddy Long-legs," as it is 

 popularly called, is familiar to every child, its larva, 

 however, is probably not so well known, from its 

 lite being spent in burrowing under the surface of 

 grass meadows, by reason of which it is less acces- 

 sible to ordinary observation. Farmers, however, 

 and horticulturists have reason to kuow and dread 

 the ravages which it commits by biting through the 

 roots of grass and garden vegetables, many an acre 

 of choice meadow laud being utterly spoiled by its 

 silent yet destructive operations. It may easily be 

 obtained by digging up small portions of turf with a 

 trowel, and appears as a fat fleshy grub or maggot 

 of a dirty grey colour, varying from an inch to au 

 inch and a half in length, destitute of feet or any 

 means of locomotion, save the complex system of 



