352 HE VIEWS. 



treatise on agriculture was written near the beginning of the 

 14th century, in Latin, and translated into Italian about 

 1350, mentions, among field plants, Faseoli (Fagiuoli), as 

 well known ; " some of them are red, some white. . . . They 

 arc planted conveniently among panick, millet, and chick 

 pease ; they are also planted in gardens, among cabbages and 

 onions.*' l It is not certain that the red and the white were 

 of the same species, or genus, or that either was a species of 

 Phaseolus, L. In the first half of the sixteenth century the 

 white Phaseoli were the more common and less esteemed. 

 The young and tender pods were eaten, with the included 

 seeds, in salads, or boiled with other vegetables. 



Two other early figures show that the Faseoli were not so 

 u \vell known " to the herbalists of the 15th and beginning of 

 the 16th century as to Crescenzi in the 14th. One is from 

 a Venice edition of the " Hortus Sanitatis," 1511 ; the other 

 from the "Tacuini Sanitatis" of Elluchasem Elimithar, Stras- 

 burg, 1531, p. 49. They are equally unlike the modern 

 Phaseolus, the earlier figure in Crescenzi, and each other. 

 The second may have originally been intended for a Teasel 

 (Dipsacus sylvestris), the Virga pastoris of the herbalists. 

 Calepin's Dictionary (ed. 1G16) says, s. v. Faseolns, that the 

 name Fasilli is now given by the common people to " a spe- 

 cies of Cicercula." This "vulgaris Phaseolus" of Matthioli 2 

 and other Italian botanists of the period is figured and de- 

 scribed in the later editions of his commentary on Dioscorides, 3 



1 " Be Agricultural lib. iii. c. 10 (Italian, Ed. Venice, 1504). The Latin 

 text was first printed at Strasburg in 1471, and with figures, 1486 ; the 

 Italian version was printed at Florence, 1478. The figure of Faseolus in 

 the earliest (Latin) edition we have seen, without date, but probably of 

 Louvain, about 1480, has little resemblance to the Phaseolus of modern 

 botany. 



M. De Candolle remarks (p. 272) that "authors of the loth century 

 say nothing of Faseolus, or any analogous name," and that " this is the 

 case with P. Crescenzi," — referring to a French translation of Crescenzi, 

 printed in 1539, which we have not seen. 



2 " Vulgares Phaseoli, quibus passim in cibis vescimur, dum satis in cam- 

 pis virent, non repant," etc., Matth. " Apologia adv. Amathum," 1559, 

 p. 33; " Vulgaris usns Phaseolus." Ibid. 31. 



3 Ed. C. Bauhin, 1598, p. 341. In the earlier edition (Venice, 1559, p. 



