affecting the Peas and Beans. 
427 
tion; nnd thus arises the opinion tliat if poas be kept over the 
year they become entirely free from the pest. Cultivators very 
properly prefer employing seed from a distant locality to using 
their own, but in this way land may be infested with insects which 
prey upon the fruit of a plant, and owing; to our climate not per- 
fecting some seeds regularly, as well as to the abundant supply 
at a cheaper rate from the coasts of the Mediterranean, the gar- 
dener especially has to rely upon a foreign market, and, as ^ve 
have just shown, seeds from southern climates being greatly and 
constantly infested by insects, we are annually introducing the 
plagues, perhaps, of Egypt into our fields and magazines.* It 
has been observed in a New York newspaper, that beans and 
peas imported from foreign parts are always worm-eaten, whereas 
those grown and used in the same country are free from worm. 
What can be the reason of this? sa3s the commentator. f Per- 
haps I am near the truth in saying that it is because imported 
peas and beans for seed may always be traced to a southern 
source. 
The direct remedies are evidently limited, and require a few 
experiments to be first made to obtain a habit of application, 
which experience would soon teach those who are actually inter- 
ested in the cultivation of peas and beans. It is recommended in 
Hovey s Magazine of Agriculture, " Immediately after gathering 
the seeds to subject them to the action of boiling water for one 
minute : by this means the little larvae are destroyed, which are at 
this time just below the integuments of the pea, without destroy- 
ing the vitality of the seeds. If the peas remain in the boiling 
water four minutes, most of them will be killed, but not all ; of 
about forty peas thus heated last year, three vegetated, and are 
now growing."! It is now more than half a century since the 
celebrated Olivier recommended this melhod in France ; and I 
shall conclude this portion of my subject by translating his obser- 
vations : — " As the waste which the Bruchi occasion is more par- 
ticularly injurious to cultivation and the food of the people, we 
ought to be so much the more desirous of finding some suitable 
means of preventing it. One of the modes, without doubt the 
most efficacious, would be to plunge into boiling water the dif- 
ferent seeds which they attack, as soon as the gathering them is 
completed. Rut it is indispensable that all should be subjected 
to this immersion, in order to kill all the larvae Avhich they con- 
tain, and entirely to destroy the propagation of a family so preju- 
dicial. One could also apply to these legumes a heat of from 4.5° 
* The bean (Vicia Faba) is a native of Egypt, and the Pea (Pisum 
sativum) of the south of Europe, 
t Gardener's Mag., vol. iv. p. 448. 
% Gardener's Chron. vol. i. p. 815. 
VOL. VII. .20 
