CHAPTER I 



HISTORICAL NOTES 



IT is not intended to place on record here an exhaustive 

 history of the Sweet Pea. Instead of doing this, the salient 

 facts alone will be brought into view, and we shall then 

 gradually come to see that although the plant has been 

 grown in this country for upwards of two hundred years, 

 to all intents and purposes its history, as far as the practical 

 man is concerned, has been made in the last half-century. 

 However, let us to the start. 



In the year 1699 there dwelt in Sicily a monk named 

 Cupani. In his spare time this holy man studied the flora 

 of that beautiful island, and this flora included the Sweet 

 Pea. Not that he gave it that name. When he sent seeds 

 to his English correspondent, Dr. Uvedale, in those days 

 a schoolmaster at Enfield in Middlesex, the unwieldy 

 cognomen or ought one to say descriptive title ? was 

 Lathyrus distoplatyphyllos, hirsutis, mollis, magno et pera- 

 maeno, flore odoratissimo, purpureo. If we were required 

 to call the Sweet Pea by this name in these days of hurry 

 and scurry the flower would lose half its charm. 



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