FIVE OBIENTAL SPECIES OF BEANS. 19 



poles or rails are withdrawn, and the fodder may be then packed as close as convenient. 

 Or a pen is made with rails, is filled up with a few sticks between, and the whole cov- 

 ered with a few boards. The pea herein sent, is called Chickasaw pea; by whom and 

 why it was so called, I do not know; but I sent many years ago one or two gallons of 

 them to the Editor of the American Farmer, in Baltimore, and having forgotten this 

 circumstance, he sent me a few in a letter by the name of Chickasaw pea. I do not 

 think it a native of this country, but have reason to believe it came from the East 

 Indies. This is the plant that would make a most excellent and convenient green 

 dressing for land, were it not as good as it is for fodder. The best way of planting it is 

 in beds two or three feet apart, and ten to fifteen inches in the beds. I usually get 

 one or two gatherings of the pods for seed, and cut them one day, and the next tie 

 them in small bundles and house them as above * * * 



N. Herbemont. 



In 1853 the mung bean was known under the names of Chickasaw 

 pea and Oregon pea, the latter name from a mistaken idea as to its 

 origin. A. B. Rozell (1854), of La Vergne, Tenn., describes it as 

 follows : 



The Oregon pea was brought a few years ago from Oregon Territory. Whether it 

 was found wild there, or was obtained from the Indians, I am not prepared to say. I 

 obtained from the State of Mississippi, a year ago last spring, about a teaspoonful of 

 seed, from the product of which I raised last season thirty bushels of peas. Had it not 

 been for the cut- worm, the ravages of which were very great, I would have raised one 

 hundred bushels. 



The seed of this plant is very small — -less in size than that of the "lady or sugar 

 pea" — and of a pale green color, with a white "hilum, " or eye. It grows on a bush 

 from five to six feet high, with five or six large branches near the ground, and they, 

 with the main stalk, put out other branches, until the stalks would make a bunch as 

 large round as a tobacco hogshead, or near it. It grows more like cotton than anything 

 else I know of, only it is much larger, with branches not so horizontal. After leaving 

 the ground a little, all these branches, with those which put out at every joint, bear 

 from four to ten pods in a bunchj with about fifteen peas in a pod, which, as an article 

 of human food, are superior to anything of the kind I ever ate. 



The stalks and leaves, which are very large and beautiful, make perhaps the finest 

 hay in the world — stock preferring it to any other — and yield a greater abundance. 

 The hay and pea together are a better and a far cheaper food than can be raised from 

 anything else in the United States, for horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs. I believe 

 I can raise more and better feed for my stock, from one acre of land, than I can from 

 five of anything else I know of. It will grow on land so poor that it would produce 

 little or nothing else; and tolerably poor land is better for it, and will produce more 

 than rich land. This may appear strange to some, but it is nevertheless true. Rich 

 land will produce more stalks, but not so many peas; in this respect it is like cotton. 

 As an improver of the soil, I consider it far superior to clover, or anything known in 

 Tennessee, when fed off on the ground and then ploughed in. 



If seed is the object one has in view in raising this plant, let it be sown in drills A.\ 

 feet apart, one or two seeds in a place, one foot asunder along each drill. In the course 

 of the summer, weed and cultivate with the plough or hoe, after the manner of raising 

 bush-beans or Indian corn. For fodder or hay sow them broadcast, and lightly harrow 

 them in, like wheat or other grain. 



In short, taking this plant altogether, it is one of the finest and richest productions 

 I ever saw; and I am satisfied in my own mind that it is the greatest acquisition to the 

 farmers of the valley of the Mississippi, and the States adjacent, that has been intro- 

 duced into this country — guano not excepted — for the last thirty years. 



