1885.] Kitthen Garden Esculents of American Origin. 451 
beans were a product of the Nahua tillage ; they are mentioned 
by Acosta Alarcon speaks of their culture by the Indians of the 
Colorado river in 1540; Alvarado of their culture by those of the 
valley of del Norte in 1541; and Vinegas says £idney-beans were 
grown by the Indians of the Colorado river in 1758. The native 
Mexican name was ayacotle, according to Humboldt, and Ban- 
croft says that they were the “eg” of the Aztecs, when boiled in 
the pod exot/, 
In November, 1492, Columbus, in Cuba, found “a sort of 
beans,” or “ fields planted with faxones and habas very different 
from those of Spain,’ and red and white beans were afterwards 
seen by him in Honduras, according to Pickering. Oviedo 
says in Nicaraugua many varieties of beans are raised,’ and Gray 
and Trumbull quote Oviedo as saying that on the island and 
on the main many bushels are harvested every year, and in 
the province of Nicaraugua they are indigenous, and a great 
number of bushels are produced yearly of these and of other 
Jesoles of other sorts and different colors.* 
The Indians of Peru, according to de Vega, had three or four 
kinds of beans called purutu? Squier found lima beans in the 
mummy covering of a woman from the huaca at Pachacamac, 
Peru :” and Stevenson also found beans in his exploration of 
Peruvian tombs which antedated the conquest." Wittmack, who 
studied the beans brought from Peruvian tombs by Reiss and 
Strobel, identified the lima beans and also three kidney-beans 
with P. vulgaris purpurens Martens, P. vulgaris ellipticus precox 
Alefield, and P. vulgaris ellipticus atrofuscus Alefield.” 
In Chili Molina says that before the country was conquered by 
the Spaniards, “thirteen or fourteen kinds of the bean, varying 
but little from the common European bean, were cultivated by the 
1 Bancroft’s Native Races, II, 347. 
2 Hist. de las Zud, Seville, 1590. 
3 Knox Coll. of Voy., I, 83. 
4$ Gray and Trumbull, l. c., 130. 
5 F. Colomb., 28 to go. 
ê Chron. Hist. of Pl., 375. 
1 Hist. Gen., 1, 285. . 
"1. 6., 141, 
® Royal Com. Hak. Soc. ed., 11, 358. 
1 Peru, 78. 
u Travels, 1, 328. 
12 De Candolle, Origine des Pl. Cult., 278. 
