KITCHEN GARDEN. 165 



alis was not permitted to name it. This proscrip- 

 tion is differently accounted for by different writers. 

 Clemens Alexandrinus ascribes it to a supposed 

 property in the bean to create barrenness in animals ; 

 and Theophrastus superadds a similar property in re- 

 lation to vegetables ; while Cicero accounts for it by 

 alleging that it "disturbed the mind, and obscured 

 the faculty of divination by dreams." It has, how- 

 ever, surmounted all these prejudices, and has long 

 been in general use, either in a green or dry state, in 

 every part of the world. 



Of the species we have mentioned, the horsebean 

 is supposed to be the type, and has many varieties, 

 known in different places by different names, as the 

 Julian, the Mazagan, the Toker, the Sandwich, the 

 Spanish, the green Genoa, and the Windsor. Of the 

 Kidney bean (the Phaseolus Vulgaris), the varieties 

 are still more multiplied, as they alter, when planted 

 near each other, by reciprocal fecundation. La 

 Buriays, in his La Quintanie, enumerates sixty, and 

 M. Bosc says that, in the garden of M. Gavoty de 

 Resthe, he had seen four hundred.* 



But, however multiplied the races, the character 

 and habits of the plants continue to be nearly the 

 same. They all affect a strong, substantial, moist 

 soil, well dug and abundantly manured ; and the en- 

 emies they most dread are late and frosty springs, 

 and early and hot summers. These circumstances 

 cannot fail to attract the attention of the cultivator, 

 and the more so as they involve a practical contra- 

 diction; for as the one invites to late planting, so 

 the other would appear to forbid it. The only 

 remedy, in this case, is to regulate our labours, not 

 by the almanac, but by the temperature of the 

 weather and the earth, which will never deceive us. 

 When these begin to favour vegetation, and not be- 

 fore, dig and manure your ground thoroughly, and 



* N. Cours d'Agriculture, art. Feve. 



