LEGUMINOUS PLANTS. 217 



the cultivator, unless they are produced so early as to 

 command a very high price. In consequence of the 

 uncertainty of the winter, in places where the demand 

 is such as to bear the expense, the earliest peas are 

 brought forward in hot-beds. 



Of peas sown in the field there are several varieties. 

 The dark sorts are generally the longest in coming to 

 maturity, and they have the rankest flavour. In fa- 

 vourable places, if they are sown in autumn, and 

 cleared the instant they are ripe, they may be followed 

 by turnips the same year; but if the sowing is delayed 

 till after Christmas, the ground will not be free in time 

 for any crop save winter wheat. A crop of peas is 

 considered to improve the soil, especially for turnips. 

 But it is not on the whole very profitable, unless upon 

 very rich loams, in which situation they are often sown 

 with beans, and the produce used as food for stock. 

 The bean-stalks, from their greater strength, prevent 

 the peas from lodging. 



THE BEAN Vicia faba has been cultivated in 

 Britain from very remote antiquity, having been in 

 all probability introduced into this country by the Ro- 

 mans. It is said to have originated in Egypt ; per- 

 haps because the Greeks, from whom we have the 

 earliest accounts of it, received it from that country as 

 a cultivated vegetable. Some travellers affirm that 

 the bean is found growing wild in Persia, near the 

 shores of the Caspian ; but that part of Asia has been 

 subjected to so many fluctuations, to so many alterna- 

 tions of culture and destruction, that it is not easy to 

 decide whether any plants which may be discovered 

 vegetating spontaneously be really indigenous, or 

 only the remains of a former cultivation. In many 

 parts of Britain, where all other memorials of former 

 habitations and culture have been swept away, certain 

 plants are found growing which a traveller passing 

 hastily over the country would very naturally describe 



VOL. xv. 19 



