Beans and peas are familiar to everybody as vegetables, and are in use all the year round, but few people are aware that they have been in cultivation perhaps longer than any other vegetable in Europe, and that many curious notions regarding both - especially beans - have been handed down to us from hoar antiquity. Beans are supposed to have been brought from Egypt; yet the Egyptian priests regarded it as a crime even to look at them. Pythagoras commanded his followers to abstain from them, professing to believe that man was formed from them; and Lucian introduces a philosopher in hell, saying that to eat beans and to eat our father's head were equal crimes. The Romans at one time believed that the souls of the dead resided in beans; yet they had a solemn feast in which beans were offered in honour of Carna, the consort of Janus, who is said to have enjoyed a little bacon with them: hence our bean-feasts date from very remote times. The Athenians used sodden beans in their feasts to Apollo. Black and white beans were used to record the votes of the people in choosing their magistrates, etc. A white bean signified absolution; a black, condemnation, which is apparently the origin of the custom of blackballing an opponent.

Beans and peas are both found among the relics of the Swiss Lake dwellings, and are named among the provision conveyed to David when he was hiding from his son Absalom. The botanical name of the bean, Fdba, is said to be derived from phago (to eat), or paba (to feed), and it has undoubtedly formed a favourite food from time immemorial; but notwithstanding the many centuries during which it has been cultivated, only two species - the common garden or broad bean, and the horse bean - are known. The kidney bean (Phaseolus) - so named from phaselus (a little boat), because of the shape of the pods - seems to have come to us from two widely different sources. The dwarf kidney bean, commonly known as the French bean, is a native of India, but is mentioned as being generally cultivated in England in 1597, whilst the scarlet runner was introduced from South America in 1633, and was first cultivated by the celebrated gardener Tradescant, at Lambeth; but for nearly a century it was grown almost wholly for its flowers, which formed the chief ornament in all nosegays, and its pods or legumes were only occasionally used as a vegetable until the eighteenth century, when they were brought into notice by Miller, of Chelsea. They are not, however, as nutritious as the broad bean, which contains 57 percent. of nutritive matter.*

* The traveller Navarette speaks of a paste of kidney beans eaten by every one in China from the emperor to the meanest peasant. The juice is extracted from the beans, which are pressed into cakes like large cheeses as white as snow. This paste is eaten either raw or fried with fish, herbs, and other things, or smoked and mixed with carraway seeds, which is said to be best of all. Navarette marvels at the vast quantity of this food, known as Teu Fu, and says, ' that Chinese who has Teu Fu, herbs, and rice, needs no other sustenance. It is a great help in case of want, and is good for carriage.'

The small black beans called fricollis, which are in such great demand all over Mexico, are doubtless a kind of kidney bean. Immense fields of this bean are cultivated, and they are eaten at every meal, being relished alike by native and foreigner. There is another sort of bean, called the snail flower (Phaseolus Caracalla), from a Celtic word meaning a hood, which was also brought by the Portuguese from South America. Nor must we omit to mention the locust bean, supposed to have been the food of John the Baptist in the wilderness, although, if procurable, the genuine locusts would be quite as likely to have formed the diet of the recluse as the bean, seeing they are eaten with relish by the natives of all the countries which they devastate, as well as by all domestic animals. The locust bean, called St. John's bread, is the fruit of the handsome carob or carouba tree, which grows abundantly in Palestine and other Eastern countries, where the pods are turned to many uses, the husks being used for feeding cattle, and are supposed to be those referred to in the parable of the Prodigal Son. A juice expressed from the pods after the beans are taken out, is used, with other ingredients, for making sherbet; the pulp is also eaten, and the leaves and bark of the tree are used for tanning skins. Of late years the dried pods have been imported into this country and used for feeding cattle.

Lentils, which are also leguminous plants, have long formed an article of diet in Egypt, and in many parts of Europe, but have only recently been introduced into England as a vegetable; they are, however, now much esteemed, especially in soups. Lentils were largely used in Greece, and were reputed to soften the temper and dispose the mind to study; but the Romans, on the contrary, said they made men lazy, hence the name from lentus (slow). Haricot beans, which are much more extensively used on the Continent than here, are the ripe beans of the white French bean, but in Italy a dish is frequently served which at first seemed to us to resemble the haricot bean, although much smaller: this, however, we found to be the seed of the white lupin, which is grown in large quantities, and respecting which a legend is told. It is said that, when the Holy Family were journeying to Egypt, being pursued, they hid themselves in a field of lupins, but the seeds rattled and almost betrayed them, whereupon they cursed the plant, declaring that henceforth men should eat of them and not be satisfied; and they are certainly unsatisfying, although pleasant eating.

Peas, which are more esteemed than beans at the present time, have almost as ancient a pedigree, having probably been brought from Egypt or Syria, Nevertheless, they do not appear to have been cultivated in England so early as the bean, for, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Fuller says, they were brought from Holland and were fit dainties for ladies - they came so far and cost so dear. There is an entry in the privy purse expenses of Henry VIII.: "Paied to a man in rewarde for bringing peascodds to the King's grace iiijs. viiid.