VARIETIES OF THE BEAN. 173 



of a substance known to chemistry as legumine, which is 

 almost the same as caseine or the cheesy matter of milk, 

 and in many respects is like the gluten or nitrogenous 

 compounds of the cereals, although somewhat different. 

 But the proportion of starch and nitrogenous substances 

 contained in the leguminous plants is far greater than that 

 of the albumen and gluten in the cereals. . 



580. The Bean. The most important of the legumi 

 nous plants in our agriculture is the bean. There are 

 many varieties of the bean, all derived originally from the 

 same. The kinds most frequently used belong to the 

 genus Phaseolus, of which three prominent varieties are 

 commonly cultivated as a field crop. These are the large 

 white bean, the small white, and the China bean, with a 

 red or pink eye. As many as thirty or forty sub-varieties 

 of this genus are found in gardens, some of them known 

 as climbing, or pole beans, others as busk beans. 



5.81. Beans grow well on a variety of soils, from a very 

 light sand to a strong loam ; but sandy or gravelly soils 

 are better for them than strong and tenacious clays. On 

 light soils the plant not only ripens earlier, but is cleaner 

 and freer from earth, which frequently adheres to the 

 plant in large quantities, during rains, especially at the 

 period of ripening. 



582. The land should be thoroughly ploughed and 

 harrowed so as to be well mellowed. The stable manure 

 applied should be well decomposed or composted, and it 

 may be placed in the hill or drill. The varieties of the 

 white bean are usually grown in hills, while bush and 

 garden beans are more often planted in drills. On dry, 

 sandy or gravelly lands beans do better if planted thick ; 

 the rows of the smaller varieties need not be more than 

 two feet apart, only space enough being left between then; 



