PATENT MEDICINES. See Medicine.
PEA (The) is one of our most valuable table vegetables, its nutritious character making it very desirable. When purchased in the pod they should be kept in a dry, cool place, and never allowed to get damp or warm They are very extensively canned both in this country and France, and vary very much in quality, many of the cheaper packings being dry peas soaked in water and canned, a practice often resorted to when the market has advanced to tempting figures. The Trade of Baltimore says of the pea : Our garden pea was cultivated by the ancient Greeks and Ro mans, but there is no proof that it was known in earlier times to the Egyptians. The introduction of the pea into England is sup posed to have been by the way of Holland or France, in the time of Henry VIII. Probably none of our garden vegetables present so many varieties as the pea, though careful experiments show that many of the named kinds are so like one another as to be undistinguishable ; our seedsmen offer from twenty to forty varie ties, and the lists in the English catalogues are still larger. There are two very distinct classes of peas; the common pea, the best known and by far the largest class, of which the unripe seeds only are eaten, and the eatable podded, also called sugar, skinless and string peas, in which the pods have not the tough, parchment like lining present in those of the common kind, but are tender and succulent. In the latter the pods are larger than the former, and are used in the green state in the same manner as snap or string beans, the young pod being cooked with the seed; are but few varieties of this class, and they have not obtained the place in our gardens which they had in those of Europe. The
common garden peas are of two kinds, one with the seeds, whether young or ripe, quite spherical and smooth, and when ripe yellow ish white; the other, known as the wrinkled or marrow pea, have even when ripe a wrinkled surface, and when mature retain more or less of a greenish shade ; they are usually much larger than the round peas, and are flattened at the sides by mutual pressure in the pods. These two kinds are still further subdivided into dwarfs, which are from six to eight inches high and need no sup port, and tall kinds which grow from two to six feet high and re quire brush or other support. Probably no vegetable differs more in quality than this, owing to variety, degree of maturity, and length of time it has been gathered. The wrinkled varieties are much sweeter and better flavored than the round, but on account of the greater earliness of the round, the first peas of the season are always of those kinds ; an experienced person can tell by feeling of the pods when they are in proper condition to pick for the table ; if too young, the nutritive matter in the seeds is very small in proportion to the hull, while too great maturity is accom panied by firmness and lack of flavor.