144 



Peas and Beans. 



I pass to the third group of food-stuffs, namely, bean-seeds and 

 the like. 



Rice-eaters cannot live on rice alone and always seek some food 

 which provides them with nitrogenous substances. Most of them 

 seek fish : but where the caste system forbids fish too sternly and 

 beans are procurable, beans are used. It is very interesting to 

 observe the schism among the Brahmins of India whereby those 

 of Bengal, beans apparently not having been easily procurable, have 

 permitted themselves fish to save the race : and there are Brahmins 

 also in Kanara who have gone the same way. The Burmese in 

 a corresponding dilemma have developed a plea that he who takes 

 the life pays the penalty, but he who eats the fish is blameless. 

 The Malay free from the trammels of Buddhism or Brahminism, 

 balances his diet with fish. But failing fish or some sort of flesh, 

 beans are almost a necessity, and the demand of the Peninsula for 

 them will always be great. We get them from the side of India 

 and we get them from the side of China. We produce none. 



One of the chief reasons why we do not raise any, and I think 

 the chief reason, is that bean crops are the produce of a more 

 advanced condition of agriculture than ours. Further it is certainly 

 to the Malay a more congenial occupation to fish than to till his 

 rice land for a second crop. 



Peas and beans are always rotational crops, sometimes of a 

 moi'e complicated rotation, but generally merely alternating with 

 rice. Where they fall in the system depends on the climate. Thus 

 in Assam they are sown on the last rain of the wet season to be 

 watei'ed afterwards by dew and an occasional storm. In drier places 

 they occupy the land in the rainy season. Here they would take the 

 place of the rice land fallow, as in Assam and as in Java; but they 

 could also be a subordinate crop to maize, at another season. 



The chief of the bean crops of Java is the soy bean — Glycine 

 soja. It returns, at 3-4 months, it is said, moi-e or less 3,200 lbs. 

 per acre, which is more than the Manchurian soy bean usually 

 yields in Northern China. Let it be remembered that there is 

 considerable difference between the flat-seeded Java plant and the 

 round-seeded Manchurian plant : and that the unsatisfactory results 

 of experiments in the Malay Peninsula with Manchurian seed in no 

 degree prove the Javanese plant not worth growing. 



Java, second to Glycine, grows in rice land various species of 

 Phaseolus, notably Phaseolus radiatus, the Mung of India, P. vulgaris, 

 the French bean, and P. lunatus, the Lima bean : also there are 

 others. We know that we can grow these horticulturally in the 

 Peninsula: and though I have no knowledge of any agricultural 

 experiments, it is quite probable that success might attend them. 



