LEGUMINOUS PLANTS. 225 



peas, and containing round rose-coloured seeds which 

 afford excellent nourishment for camels, and are, when 

 green, employed as human food. These likewise 

 ' the Arabs collect and dry, and by hard boiling 

 obtain from them an oil which they use instead of 

 butter to grease their hair and bodies.' * 



Various descriptions of pulse are cultivated in the 

 East, but these are seldom of a large growth. The 

 culture of smaller legumes as human Ibod, similarly 

 with that of the millets and other small-seeded 

 grains, is adapted only to that state of society in 

 which the money-price of labour is low, and yet 

 where the climate and other concurring circumstances 

 are obstacles to the cultivation of the more valuable 

 kinds of vegetables. Moisture and heat, as well as a 

 soil comparatively rich, are. required for the production 

 of rice ; and the cerealia grown in more temperate 

 climates cannot be raised unless there be either a 

 sufficiency of manure, which cannot be procured with- 

 out an abundant stock of domesticated animals, or a 

 natural richness of soil, which is incompatible with 

 dry land in a warm climate. 



In the elevated parts of India which lie out of the 

 direction of the periodical rains, a scanty irrigation 

 can at best be obtained, and that only by sinking 

 deep wells or by constructing tanks and reservoirs at 

 a great expense ; where these imperfect means are 

 not within reach, the ground is scarcely ever mois- 

 tened, as probably a shower of rain does not fall 

 during six months. Under these circumstances the 

 cultivation of pulse is resorted to as a matter of neces- 

 sity, and the smaller and the more hardy these are, 

 the more certain is the prospect of their yielding a crop. 

 In sultry climates there is often a portion of humidity 

 which plays in the atmosphere, and which will form 

 dew upon the leaves of a plant, when the evaporative 



* Burckhardt's Nubia, p. 46. 



