PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 3lD 



The -word faha recurs in several of the Aiyan lan- 

 guages of Europe, but with modifications which philolo- 

 gists alone can recognize. We must not forget, however, 

 Adolphe Pictet's very just remark,^ that in the cases of 

 the seeds of cereals and leguminous plants the names of 

 one species are often transferred to another, or that cer- 

 tain names were sometimes specific and sometimes generic. 

 Several seeds of like form were called kiiannos by the 

 Greeks; several different kinds of haricot bean {Pha- 

 seolus,I)olichos) bear the same name in Sanskrit, and /afect 

 in ancient Slav, hohu in ancient Prussian, hobo in Armo- 

 rican, fav, etc., may very well have been used for peas, 

 haricot beans, etc. In our own day the phrase coffee-6eaw 

 is used in the trade. It has been rightly supposed that 

 when Pliny speaks o{ fabarice islands, where beans were 

 found in abundance, he alludes to a species of wild pea 

 called botanically Phiiin marithnum. 



The ancient inhabitants of Switzerland and of Italy 

 in the age of bronze cultivated a small-fruited variety of 

 Faba vulgaris.'^ Heer calls it Celtica nana, because it 

 is only six to nine millimetres long, whereas our modem 

 field bean is ten to twelve millimetres. He has compared 

 the specimens from Montelier on Lake Morat, and St. 

 Peter's Islands on Lake Bienne, with others of the same 

 epoch from Parma. Mortellet found, in the contem- 

 porary lake-dwellings on the Lake Bourget, the same 

 small bean, which is, he says, very like a variety culti- 

 vated in Spain at the present day.^ 



The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.* 

 It is true that hitherto no beans have been found in the 

 sarcophagi, or drawings of the plant seen on the monu- 

 ments. The reason is said to be that the plant was 

 reckoned unclean.^ Herodotus^ says, "The Egyptians 



^ Orirjines Indo-Euroi'^ennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 35^. 



* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 22, figs. 445-47. 

 ' Perrin, tude Pr^historique sur la Savoie, p. 2. 



* Delile, Plant. Cult, en gypte, p. 12 ; Reynier, Aconomie des Egyp. 

 tiens et Carthaginois, p. 340; "Uuger, Pjlan. d. Alt. ^gyp., p. 64; Wilkiu- 

 Bon, Man. and Cus. of Anc. Egyptians, p. 402. 



* Eeynier, uhi supra, tries to discover the reason of this. 

 ' Herodotus, Histoire, Larcher's trans., vol. ii. p. 32. 



