BEANS.
The person who "doesn't know beans" is counted a stupid one. You and I know the little white dry beans that began to be grown as a field crop to supply our army during the Civil War. This is the bean that supplies our navy, too, and one name of it is, "Navy bean." Boston bakes this bean, and it is a staple food for man and beast.
We know the garden beans whose pods we eat —snap and butter beans—beans that grow in bush form and others that climb poles. All these kinds are sprung from one species, probably native to South America, and spread to India, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Europe, following the Spanish invasion of Peru. The general name, kidney bean, is applied to this group, varieties of which are the food that substitutes for meat in warm countries, swarming with a great population.
We know Lima beans, the broad-podded, flat kind, bigger than the kidney. It is a separate species, called lunatus, the moon-shaped bean, credited to South America, and named for the city of Lima, the Peruvian capital. It has bush and pole varieties, and some especially delicate dwarf kinds have been derived from the original large-seeded species.
The scarlet runner is a distinct species, grown chiefly as an ornamental vine, that covers trel lises and porches with its abundant flower clustered tendrils, vigorous, bright foliage, and wholesome seeds, that are good to eat, in the green pods or dry. In this country they are rarely used for food.
We in America do not know the broad bean of Europe and Asia, unless we live in Canada, where this rich vegetable is grown to mix with fodder corn in making ensilage. The whole plant is rich in nitrogen, and it goes into the silo, leaving the roots with their store of nitrogen in the tuber cles, to fertilize the soil. The dry beans are used in the old countries as cattle food. Usually they are ground into meal and mixed with coarser, less concentrated food. Housewives put down pod beans of different sorts in brine for winter use. The custom is an old one in England, Germany, and the Low Countries. Though a coarse vege table fare, beans are almost one fourth protein, or muscle-making food. They also contain oil, which is a heat-producing food, suited for people who work outdoors in cold weather.
We are beginning to know the strange Soy, or Sofia, bean from Japan and China, a native of these countries, and cultivated there and in India for centuries unnumbered, as a food for man. It is more like a pea than a bean; the seed and the whole plant are rich in nitrogen. They are used for stock food, and plowed under to enrich the soil. Cowpeas are very like Soy beans, and put to the same uses.
In Mexico and farther south the little dark beans, called frijoles, are a common food of the people, as the horse beans are in the warm countries of Europe.