HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



131 



disgrace the Herbals of Culpepper and others, who 

 wrote about the time of the Commonwealth. A 

 mind like Gerard's would be above such ridiculous 

 superstition, aud would know that a knowledge of 

 herbs would be sooner gained by looking down to 

 examine plants, than by lookiug up to observe the 

 planets. This author informs us that one variety 

 of pea is indigenous to this country ; he says : " The 

 wild pea do grow in pastures and arable fields in 

 divers places, especially about the fields belonging 

 of the Bishops Hatfield, in Hertfordshire." He 

 adds, "There be divers sorts of peason, differing very 

 notably in many respects, some of the garden, and 

 others of the field, and yet both counted tame; 

 some with tough skins or membrances in the cods, 

 and others have none at all; whose cods are to be 

 eaten with the peas when they be young as those 

 of young kidney beans ; others carrying their fruit 

 in the tops of the branches are esteemed as Scottish 

 peason, which are not very common." He also 

 describes the wild aud the everlasting pea, which 

 perhaps may be some of the varieties of Lathyrus 

 or Vetchling. 



Tusser has the following passage in his " Five 

 Hundred Points of Good Husbandry." Eor the 

 month of January, he says : 



" Dig Garden, stroy mallow, now may ye at ease, 

 And set (as a daiiuie) thy runcival pease." 



Ronncival was an old word for large and strong, 

 derived from the gigantic bones of the old heroes 

 pretended to be shown at Roncesvalles. Hence the 

 word became a common epithet for anything large 

 or strong, as Ronncival peas, the large sort now 

 called marrow-fat (seeTimb's "Things not Generally 

 Known"). 



Green peas became a popular delicacy in England 

 soon after the restoration of Charles II., and, 

 strange enough, even for late ones, so early as 1769, 

 as it is a matter of history that on the 28th of Oc- 

 tober of that year a guinea a pottle — not quite half 

 a dish — was given at Covent Garden market ; and 

 as much as ten times that sum has been paid since 

 in the same market for a quart of green peas 

 shelled. 



There are many curious and superstitious customs 

 with respect to peas and beans, related in Brand's 

 " Popular Antiquities." I will just mention one or 

 two. 1st. On Carling Sunday— the Sunday before 

 Palm Sunday — at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and many 

 other places in the North of England, grey peas, 

 after having been steeped a night in water, are fried 

 with butter, given away, and eaten at a kind of 

 entertainment. They are called Carlings, probably 

 as we call the presents at fairs, fairings. From 

 what the custom arose is uncertain, but one old 

 author states that it took its rise from the disciples 

 plucking the ears of corn and rubbing them in their 

 hands. The efficacy of pea-cods in love affairs is 



also one of the popular superstitions alluded to by 

 Touchstone in "As You Like It," act ii. scene 4, 

 and it is said still practised in Suffolk and other 

 parts of the country. The kitchen-maid, when she 

 shells green peas, never omits, if she finds oue 

 having nine peas, to lay it on the lintel of the 

 kitchen-door, and the first clown who enters it is 

 infallibly to be her husband, or at least her sweet- 

 heart. 



The pea goes through all the stages of its vege- 

 tation in a very brief period. More than one 

 instance is on record of a crop being obtained from 

 seed matured the same season. In Fleming's 

 "British Farmer's Magazine," November, 1826, 

 it is stated that some Spanish dwarf peas were 

 sown in February, and the crop was reaped the first 

 week in July. Some of the pods were left to mature 

 their seed, which, when sufficiently ripe, were again 

 committed to the earth on the same piece of ground, 

 and a second crop was reaped on the 27th of 

 September. 



The varieties and sub-varieties of the common 

 pea are never-ending. These have obtained their 

 names, some from imaginary qualities, some from 

 the peculiar mode of culture, others from the 

 persons who first produced them, and some from 

 more fanciful distinctions. The native country of 

 the pea, like most of our cultivated vegetables, is 

 not known. Valmont Bomare says the garden-pea 

 was originally of France. Coles informs us, in his 

 "History of Plants," that "the Fulham pease, 

 which came first out of France, are so called because 

 the grounds about Fulham, near London, do bring 

 them forward soonest." 



The English name appears to be a corruption of 

 the Latin pisum. Tusser and Gerard both wrote it 

 peason. Dr. Holland, in Charles I.'s reign,' spells 

 it pease, since abbreviated into pea. 



The Sea-pea, Pisum maritimum, now Lathyrus 

 maritimus, is a native of this country. It grows on 

 pebbly beaches, very rare and local. It differs from 

 the other esculent peas in being a perennial, the 

 root striking deeply into the ground among stones 

 and saud by the seashore. This pea is hard and 

 indigestible, but it is said to have saved many 

 persons from perishing by famine in the year 1555. 



I will conclude this article with an extract from 

 a paper on the Historical Notes of Cultivated 

 Plants, in the Horticultural Society's Journal, 

 vol. ix. " The pea has been stated by several authors 

 to be a native of Italy, and Professor Targioni 

 admits this to be the case with the field pea (Pisum 

 arvense) ; but most botanists insist on the garden 

 pea (P. sativum) being a distinct species of un- 

 known origin." In this conclusion we cannot join, 

 all our cultivated Pisum are surely referrible to one 

 species, which is most probably really indigenous 

 in the more eastern districts, where it is now found 

 apparently wild. Lentils (Erinm Lens), which are 



