land weed, Lactuca scaiiola, is not at first sight a very prepos- 
sessing forbear and many a gardener would look in vain for re- 
semblances to tender lettuces. But to the botanist, the mature 
plants of the wild and cultivated lettuces are very similar, and 
the differences which the epicurean and the gardener see are only 
very minor and insignificant distinctions. Especially are these 
distinctions decreased when one contrasts a well grown plant of 
the wild lettuce with a somewhat poorly grown Roman lettuce. 
The wild lettuce is an immigrant to this country, its native home 
being temperate and southern Europe, northern Africa and tem- 
perate Asia. The botanist Boissier mentions a wild variety with 
crinkled leaves which came from the mountains of western Asia. 
As to varieties, three are said to have been cultivated 2000 years 
or so ago by the Greeks, while now we have from 82 to 120 distinct 
varieties, ot which the 42 varieties illustrated are some of the 
most important. 
Another variable vegetable is the pea, of which over five 
hundred distinct varieties are known, most of which are highly 
valued as food crops for man. These varieties now come from 
every temperate region of the world, including the Abyssinian 
highlands and the desert oases of Turkestan in Western China. 
They differ from one another in seed color, shape, texture, sugar 
content, size; in number of peas per pods, in the number of pods 
per plant, in time of blooming, in time of maturing; in shape, 
size, texture and color of pod; in shape, size, color and number of 
flowers; in height of plant; in shape, size, color and texture of the 
leaves, in number of branches, and in the presence or absence of 
tendrils. Some varieties have bloomed, ripened their seed and 
finished their life work before others have reached the flowering 
stage. Some varieties will mature seed under the most unfavor- 
able conditions, while other varieties will hardly bear seed under 
any conditions at all. Now from where did such a variable 
vegetable come ? Botanists consider some of the round, smooth- 
seeded field peas with colored seed coats the ones most nearly 
like the wild ancestor. But here again, there is a degree of guess- 
work involved, for many of the so-called wild peas of Europe and 
Asia may be escapes from the gardens that have come and gone 
during the last three or four centuries. BeCandolle believes 
western Asia was probably the original home of the pea, as there 
is every reason to believe its cultivation in eastern and southern 
Asia is comparatively recent. The Swiss lake dwellers of the 
Bronze Age had a small variety of pea said to somewhat resemble 
the wild field pea of south Europe and this is probably the earliest 
record of the cultivation of peas we possess. Some authors con- 
tend that a true wild pea from which our cultivated pea might 
have arisen no longer exists, but there is some evidence of this 
being a hasty statement, as southeastern Europe and western 
Asia both contain truly wild species of peas which are quite 
closely related to our garden forms. 
When one gets tired of peas for dinner, asparagus is a good 
