242 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



Very curious, truly, were the notions current about beans 

 amongst the Romans; they were considered as decidedly 

 opposed to that evenness and tranquillity of mind which, 

 with the ancients, constituted the summum bonum; they 

 were liable, if partaken, to render women barren; they 

 were believed by some to be the residence of the souls of 

 the departed, and, like the scroll of Jeremiah, they were 

 written within and without with lamentation and woe, for 

 their very leaves were supposed to be marked with the 

 words of wretchedness and death. But notwithstanding 

 all this, beans were largely cultivated by the Eomans, and 

 in their writings we can to this day gather much that is 

 really practically useful in modern culture of the crop. 

 Considerable importance, therefore, we find was attached 

 by them to the crop, evidence of which is found in the 

 fact, that it gave a name to one of the most distinguished 

 families of the most distinguished period of Roman history ; 

 for as we find a family deriving its name, Pisanii, from the 

 pea, so we find another deriving its name from the bean, 

 the Fabii. 



40. "We have already named the two or three species into 

 which the genus has been, by modern authorities, divided ; 

 of these there are many varieties. Formerly the vetch was 

 the representative of the bean tribe, and the bean was 

 classed under it as the vicia faba ; but the marked distinc- 

 tion between the seeds those of the vetch being round, 

 while those of the bean are oval and compressed caused 

 later authorities to class the bean faba vulgaris as a distinct 

 genus. Botanically described, the bean " has the flowers 

 axillary, nearly sessile stalks, with several flowers very 

 short ; legumes ascending, twined, coriaceous ; leaflets ellip- 

 tical, acute, entire; tendril abortive; stipule half arrow 

 shaped; toothed at the base, annual, flowering in June and 

 July; stem, three to five feet high; leaflets smooth, larger 

 acute at each end, and alternate; flowers from six to ten 

 and more on a short racemose stalk ; white, with a broad 

 black velvet-like spot on each wing ; calyx whitish, with 

 ovate taper teeth ; legume large, thick, oblong, pulpy with- 



