58 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



Both peas and beans were not only eaten as vegetable, but 

 were dried and ground into meal, and doubtless Caesar's 

 bread was composed in part of pea flour. England got her 

 first peas from Holland not many centuries ago; and coming 

 so far and costing so dear, they w^ere at first only accounted 

 "fit dainties for ladies." Soon, however, their use spread, 

 and before potatoes became a common diet, peas formed a 

 main article of food with the British working classes. The 

 "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold" of children's games, 

 would seem to date back to those early days when such a dish 

 was as much a matter of course as the Scotchman's bowl of 

 oatmeal. Like oats too, peas soon showed their value as food 

 for horses. So in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Bottom 

 in his capacity of an ass, makes out but poorly with fairy fare, 

 lauKTiting that he "had rather have a handful of dried peas." 



The bean of history is the broad or Windsor variety, known 

 botanically as Vicia Faba — a native, it is thought, of South- 

 western Asia or Northern Africa, introduced into Britain by 

 the Romans and extensively grown in the Old World, for the 

 entertainment of beast as well as man. To this bean the an- 

 cients attached some mystical virtue — black beans being thrown 

 ov'.'r the head at the Latin festival called Lemuria, to lay the 

 ghost of the departed; and the "Iliad" speaks of their employ- 

 ment in sacrifices to the gods. The Greeks, moreover, used 

 benns in their elections by ballot; and this custom seems to 

 have furnished the reason for P5^thagoras' forbidding them 

 to his disciples, being a figurative way of saying "the philoso- 

 pher should not mix in politics." 



The American summer is, as a rule, too hot for the suc- 

 cessful culture of the Windsor bean, so in this country it is 

 comparatively little known. The lima and the different varie- 

 ties of kidney beans — the common field, garden, snap, and 

 string beans — which are the customary sorts on American 

 tables, are all natives of the New World. 



