450 Kitchen Garden Esculents of American Origin. [ May, 
ginia, “ called by us beans, because in greatness and partly in 
shape they are like to the beans in England, saving that they are 
flatter, of more divers colours, and some pied. The leaf also of 
the stem is much different”! In 1700-8 Lawson? says: “ The 
kidney-beans were here before the English came, being very plen- 
tiful in Indian corn-fields. The ‘bushel bean,’ a spontaneous 
growth, very flat, white and mottled with a purple figure, was 
trained on poles, [This is undoubtedly the lima, as it answers to 
the description given to me by a very credible person who se- 
cured for me samples from a spontaneous plant in Florida, ‘the 
trunk as large as a man’s thigh, and the plant known for the past 
twenty-five years, some years yielding as much as fifty bushels 
of pods,’ and the seeds smaller than the cultivated lima, very 
flat, white and mottled with purple.} Indian rounceval or mirac- 
ulous pulse, so called from their large pods and great increase ; 
they are very good, and so are the bonavis, calavances, nanticokes 
and abundance of other pulse, too tedious to mention, which we 
find the Indians possessed of when first we settled in America.” 
[ Bonavis is perhaps bonavista, a variety of bean sold by Thorburn, 
a New York seedsman, in 1828. The donxavista bean (Long) of 
Jamaica, is said to be Lablab vulgaris ; calavances is the Barbadoes 
name for Dolichos sinensis L., as used by Long, a red bean; and 
galavangher pea is the Barbadoes name for D. barbadensis 
Mayc.] In A true declaration of Virginia, London, 1610, p. 12, 
_ “the two beanes [planted with the corn] runne-upon the stalks of 
- the wheat, as our garden pease upon stickes.” 
In 1528 Narvaes found beans in great plenty in Florida 
and westward, and de Vaca found beans in New Mexico or 
Sonora in 1535. De Soto, 1539, also found beans in abun- 
dance,‘ and mentions that “the granaries were full of maes and 
“small beans,” but we have no clue to the species. Beans are also 
mentioned in Ribault’s voyage, in 1562, as cultivated by the 
Florida Indians, 
The mentions of beans in Mexico are frequent. The Olmecs 
raised beans before the time of the Toltecs, as Veytia informs us;’ 
1 Pinkerton’s Voy., XII, 595. 
_ * Voyage to Carolina, pp. 76, 77. 
- §Cabeza de Vaca’s Relation. 
*A relation of the invasion and conquest of Florida (no title page). 
Š Hist. Antiq. de Mejico, 1, 154. 
