768 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



sack, but afterwards mostly decline considerably ; in some seasons so much ap scarcely to 

 repay the expenses. This sort of crop affords the most profit in such pea seasons as are 

 inclined to be cool, as under such circumstances the pease are most retarded in their ma- 

 turation or ripening, and of course the markets kept from being over abundantly supplied, 



4754. The threshing of jJease requires less labor than that of any other crop. Where 

 the haulm is wished to be preserved entire it is best done by hand ; as the threshing- 

 machine is apt to reduce it to chaff. But where the fodder of pease is to be given imme- 

 diately to horses on the spot, the breaking it is no disadvantage. 



4.755. The produce of the pea in ripened seeds is supposed by some to be from three 

 and a half to four quarters the acre; others, however, as Donaldson, imagine the average 

 of any two crops together not more than about twelve bushels; and that on the whole, if 

 the value of the produce be merely attended to, it may be considered as a less profitable 

 crop than most others. But as a means of ameliorating and improving the soil at the 

 same time, it is esteemed as of great value. 



4756. With respect to the produce in green j^ease in the husk, the average of the early 

 crops in Middlesex is supposed to be from about twenty-five to thirty sacks the acre, 

 which, selling at from eight to eighteen shillings the sack, afford about eighteen pounds 

 the acre. The author of The Synopsis of Husbandry, however, states the produce about 

 Dartford, in the county of Kent, at about forty sacks the acre, though, he says, fifty have 

 sometimes been gathered from that space of land. 



4757. The produce of pease in straw is very uncertain, depending so much on the sort 

 and the season : in general it is much more bulky than that of the cereal grasses; but may 

 be compressed into very little room. 



4758. The produce of pease in four is as 3 to 2 of the bulk in grain, and husked and 

 split for soups as 4 to 2. A thousand parts of pea flour afforded Sir H. Davy 574 parts 

 of nutritive or soluble matter, viz. 501 of mucilage or vegetable animal matter, 22 of 

 sugar, 35 of gluten, and 16 of extract or matter rendered insoluble during the operation. 



4759. The use of pease for soups, puddings, and other culinary purposes, is well known. 

 In some places porridge, [brose, and bread .is made of pease-flour, and reckoned very 

 wholsome and substantial. In Stirlingshire it is customary to give pease or bean biscuits 

 to horses while in the yoke as a refreshment. The portion of pease that is not consumed 

 as human food is mostly appropriated to the purposes of fattening hogs and other sorts of 

 domestic animals; and, in particular instances, supplies the place of beans, as the proven, 

 der of laboring horses ; but, care should be taken, when used in this way, that they be suffi- 

 ciently dry, as, when given in the green state, they are said to produce the gripes, and other 

 bowel complaints, in those animals. Bannister, after observing that the haulm is a very 

 wholesome food for cattle of every kind, says, there is generally a considerable demand for 

 pease of every denomination in the market, the uses to which they may be applied being so 

 many and so various. The boilers, or yellow pease, always go off briskly ; and the hog- 

 pease usually sell for 6d. or Is. per quarter more than beans. For feeding swine the pea is 

 much better adapted than the bean, it having been demonstrated by experience, that hogs 

 fat more kindly when fed with this grain than on beans; and, what is not easy to be account- 

 ed for, the flesh of swine which have been fed on pease, it is said, will swell in boiling, and 

 be well tasted ; whilst the flesh of the bean-fed hog will shrink in the pot, the fat will boil 

 out, and the meat be less delicate in flavour. It has, therefore, now become a practice 

 with those farmers who are curious in their pork, to feed their hogs on pease and barley- 

 meal, and if they have no pease of their own growth, they rather choose to be at the ex- 

 pense of buying them, than suffer their hogs to eat beans. Nay, so far, says he, do some 

 of them carry their prejudice in this particular, as to reject the grey pease for this use, 

 as bearing too near an afBnity to the bean, and therefore reserve their growths of white 

 pease solely for hog fatting. 



4760. In boiling sjjlit pease, some samples, without reference to variety, fall or moulder 

 down freely into pulp, while others continue to maintain their form. The former are 

 called boilers. This property of boiling depends on the soil ; stiff land, or sandy land, 

 that has been limed or marled uniformly, produces pease that will not melt in boiling, 

 no matter what the variety may be. 



4761. Pease straiv cut green andi dried is reckoned as nourishing as hay, and is consi- 

 dered as excellent for sheep. 



4762. In the saving of any particular sorts of pease for seed, they should be carefully 

 looked over while in flower, in order to draw out all such plants as are not of the right 

 sort ; as there will always be, in every sort, some roguish plants, which, if left to mix, 

 will degenerate the kind. As many rows as may be thought sufficient to furnish the 

 desired quantity of seed should then be marked out, and left till their pods turn brown, 

 and begin to split, when they should immediately be gathered up, with the haulm ; and 

 if the farmer has not room to stack them till winter, they may be threshed out as soon as 



