fully odoriferous; its pods are of very uncommon 
size, one-celled, and provided with a deep, downy 
packing for the seeds; and its cotyledons, com- 
pared with those of the great multitude of exo- 
genous plants, are gigantic, remarkably well 
defined, and admirably adapted to display the 
wonders of embryo vegetable development. Even 
if the bean were not a plant of great economical 
value to the farmer and the gardener, it could 
| not fail to possess a fascinating interest for at 
once the archeologist, the florist, the phytologist, 
and the vegetable chemist. 
History of the Bean.—The bean figures in very 
ancient notices of agriculture, and was more 
esteemed than any other kind of pulse by both 
the ancient Greeks and the early Romans. The 
Athenians used sodden beans in their religious 
festivals,in honour of Apollo; and the Romans 
presented beans in a festival which they held in 
honour of Carna, the wife of Janus, and to which, 
in allusion to the beans, they gave the name of 
Fabaria. Janus, whom the Romans always repre- 
sented with two faces, was a personification of 
Noah, looking backward to the world which had 
been destroyed, and forward to the world which his 
offspring were to replenish. Carneus was another 
'name given to Noah by his descendants; and 
| hence the name Carna was used to designate 
his wife,—the wife of Janus; and the bean was 
presented on her festival, as well as on many 
other occasions, on account of the resemblance of 
the shape of its pod to the form which tradition 
assigned to Noah’s ark. In Egypt also, the ship 
of Isis was a type of the ark, as Osiris was a per- 
sonification of Noah; and in every anciently in- 
habited country, some of the earliest traditions 
or most venerated legends make reference, more 
or less direct, to the awful events of the deluge, 
and, in most instances, embody some type or 
illustration of Noah’s wonderful deliverance. On 
this account, the bean, from the supposed ark- 
like shape of its pod, seems to have been generally 
adopted among the more civilized polytheists of 
antiquity as a sacred type of the Noahic deliver- 
ance, and as an important element in the symbols 
of idolatrous worship. The bean appears to have 
been regarded in Egypt as typical of some of 
those mysteries which the priests constantly 
endeavoured to conceal from the knowledge of 
the uninitiated, and therefore was publicly shun- 
ned by the priests as an object too sacred for 
ordinary observation. Pythagoras, who travelled 
into Egypt in search of knowledge, and who 
obtained there a large portion of his philosophy, 
seems to have adopted the Egyptian priests’ notion 
of the bean ; for, during the period of his influence 
in Greece, he forbade this legume to be used. The 
bean is held sacred by the modern Hindvos, and 
is mentioned in some of their wildest and most 
ancient legends. 
The noble and powerful family of the Fabii 
among the ancient Romans are supposed by some 
writers to have taken their name from special 
BEAN. 
379 
connexion of their ancestry with the cultivation 
of the bean. A dish or meal of beans was called 
in Latin Jomentum, and was eaten with whole 
corn in a gruel or pottage. Beans were used by 
the Romans, in taking the votes of the people, 
and in the election of magistrates. They were 
likewise used for medicine; and when bruised 
and boiled with garlic, were regarded as a cure 
for old and stubborn coughs which had baffled 
every other remedy. The meal or flower of beans 
was thought to possess the power of removing 
wrinkles and smoothing the skin, and was in 
consequence used by the Roman ladies as a fa- 
vourite cosmetic. 
The bean is said by some travellers to be grow- 
ing wild in Persia, near the shores of the Caspian 
sea; and it either may be indigenous there, or 
may have been brought thither by some of the 
numerous tribes and armies which, in ancient 
times, rushed across Persia in careers of conquest. 
The bean is indigenous in Egypt, Barbary, and 
Morocco ; it is believed to have been origin- 
ally introduced from the first of these countries 
into Great Britain; it was transplanted by the 
Moors from Barbary into Spain, and by the Por- 
tuguese from Spain into Portugal; and the Ma- 
zagan variety, which has long been regarded in | 
Britain as the best for an early crop, was obtained | 
from a Portuguese settlement on the coast of 
Morocco, called Mazagan. 
Roman cultivation of the Bean. —The faba of the | 
Roman writers on rural affairs, though treated 
by them as the most important of their legumin- | 
ous plants, has been pronounced by learned com- 
mentators a plant different from the present 
faba of botanists, and possessing characteristics 
which are not found united in any existing 
legume. But so very useful, prominent, and 
widely diffused a plant as the Roman faba can 
scarcely by any possibility’ have become lost ; 
most of the recorded characteristics agree quite 
closely with those of our common small field 
bean ; one or two circumstances, rather than 
characteristics, are discordant or inexplicable, 
principally from obscurity or ambiguity in the 
language which states them; and, at the very 
utmost, the Roman faba may have been a variety 
of bean, which is now slightly obsoleted by 
changes in climate and culture, and by the in- 
fluences of hybridizing and improvement. 
Pliny says that the faba does not come up till 
from 15 to 20 days after it is sown; that it is 
longer in coming up than grain or any other 
kind of pulse; that it comes up in a leaf, and 
then puts forth the stem; that its stem is 
single, and is not divided by knots; that its 
leaves are round and numerous; that a crop 
of it flowers during so long a period as forty 
days; that, though no one stem flowers so long, 
yet when one stem is passing out of flower, an- 
other is but beginning to bloom; that the seed 
is perfected in forty days after the flowering ; 
that the pods are produced alternately on each 
aeumaey| 
