148 GARDEN PLANTS. PART IT. 



with a pair of scissors for cutting them off, and not be allowed 

 to wrench them, as is usually done, from the stems, often 

 causing thereby great damage to the plants. 



Sowing for succession should be made at intervals of about a 

 month, but in Bengal not later than the middle of December. 



There is perhaps no vegetable that deteriorates less from 

 sowing seed saved in the country, year after year, than the 

 Pea. Any one, therefore, who has once received a good 

 supply of seed, particularly in the Upper Provinces, whither 

 the expense of carriage of imported seed is very great, need 

 require no fresh supply from Europe for many years, if he ever 

 does at all. The seed saved, however, must be the best produce 

 the plants yield, and not the mere refuse, left after numerous 

 gatherings for the table. An especial crop should be grown for 

 the sole purpose of saving seed from. 



The seed, when well dried, should be stored in bottles and 

 carefully corked, as there is a small species of beetle which 

 preys upon them, and which would otherwise enter and destroy 

 the whole stock. 



Canavalia gladiata. 

 MuJchun Seem. 



A native vegetable : the pod is large, flat, sword-shaped, fully 

 nine inches long, and more than an inch and a quarter wide ; 

 though rather coarse-looking, when sliced and boiled is exceed- 

 ingly tender, and, as I think, about the nicest of all the 

 native vegetables, little if anything inferior to French Beans, 

 and thoroughly deserving of cultivation in the garden. 



The plant is a perennial, and a most extensive climber, 

 ascending to the summit of the loftiest trees., and bearing year 

 after year, from the end of the Kains, throughout the Cold season, 

 an abundant crop aloft in the branches. Sow the seed in June. 



Dr. Koxburgh describes three varieties thus : 



" a. Erythrosperma : flowers and seeds red. 



" /?. Erythrosperma : flowers white and seeds red. 



"y. Leucosperma*: flowers and large seeds white. Pods about 

 two feet long, often twenty seeded. This variety is considered the 

 most wholesome of them all, and is extensively used at the tables 

 of Europeans, as well as by the natives of Sylhet, where it is in- 

 digenous." 



