Among the chief enemies of peas may be mentioned slugs and mice. The former often abound in damp situa tions, or places surrounded by trees. The remedy usually applied is, the spreading of new slaked lime over the sur face of the ground, very early in the morning, when the slugs are abroad. A simple preventive of the attacks of mice consists in being particularly careful, in sowing the peas, to leave none exposed on the surface ; if the seed be all duly covered, these animals do not seem to be very expert at discovering the rows.
It is generally thought advisable to change the seed year ly ; few gardeners, therefore, ripen their own seed. In deed, the professed seed-growers possess superior oppor tunities for saving the kinds in a genuine state ; and if they be men of judgment and fidelity, it is better for the gar dener to buy from them, than to trouble himself with sav ing either the seeds of peas, or of any other garden plants, which are apt to degenerate by intermixture of pollen.
Beans.
297. The Bean (Vicia Fact, Lin.) belongs to the same class and order, and natural family, with the pea. It is the Feve de marais of the French. It is perhaps superfluous to mention, that it is an annual plant, rising from two to four feet, with a thick angular stem ; the leaves divided, and without tendrils ; the flowers white, with a black spot in the middle of the wing ; seed•pods thick, long, woolly within, and inclosing the large ovate flatted seeds, for the sake of which the plant is cultivated in gardens. It is a native of the East, but has been known in this country from the earliest times.
298. There are two principal kinds of the plant, the gar den bean and the field bean : The first only falls to be spoken of here. Of this there are many varieties. The Mazagan is one of the hardiest and best flavoured of the small and early sorts. Mazagan is a Portuguese settle ment on the coast of Africa, near the Straits of Gibraltar ; and it is said, that seeds brought from thence afford plants that are more early and more fruitful than those which spring from home-saved seed. The Lisbon is next in point of earliness and fruitfulness ; some indeed consider it as merely the Mazagan ripened in Portugal. The Dwarf-fan or cluster bean is likewise an early variety, but it is plant ed chiefly for curiosity : it rises only six or eight inches high ; the branches spread out like a fan, and the pods are produced in small clusters. The Sandwich bean has been long noted for its fruitfulness ; the Toker and the broad Spanish are likewise great bearers. Of all the large kinds,
the Windsor bean is preferred for the table. When gather ed young, the seeds are sweet and very agreeable ; when the plants are allowed room and time, they produce very large seeds, and in tolerable plenty, though they are not accounted liberal bearers. There are several sub-varie ties, such as the Broad Windsor, Taylor's NVindsor, and the Kentish Windsor. The Long-podded bean rises about three feet high, and is a great bearer, the pods being long and narrow, and closely filled with oblong middle-sized seeds. This sort is now very much cultivated, and there are several subordinate varieties of it, as the Early, the Large, and the Sword Longpod. The White-blossomed bean is so called, because the black mark on the wing of the blossom is wanting. The seed is semitransparent ; when young, it has little of the peculiar bean flavour, and is on this account much esteemed ; it is at the same time a co pious bearer, and proper for a late crop. It may be men tioned, that DcImlay, in Le bon Jardinier, describes as excellent a new variety cultivated at Paris, which he calls the green bean from China; it is late, but very pro ductive ; and the fruit remains green, even when ripe and dried.
299. The early sorts, such as the Mazagan and Lisbon, are sown in the end of October or beginning of November, in a sheltered situation, in front of a wall, reed-fence, or other hedge, and in drills about two inches deep. The plants are earthed up in November as they advance. In severe frost, some haulm or fern is laid over them, as in the case of early peas. In March and April, as the beans begin to shew flower, they are kept close back to the fence, by means of lines of pack-thread. When the lower blossoms are fully expanded or beginning to fade, the tops of the stems are pinched off, this being found to forward the production of pods. With this sort of care, a crop is generally procured about the end of May or first of June. Successive autumn and winter sowings are managed much in the same way, being sown in rows, eighteen incites apart, in sheltered borders or quarters. It is necessary to guard against the ravages of mice, which are very apt to attack the new sown rows. Some gardeners sow their win ter beans thickly, and cover them With a frame, trans planting them in February or March : in this way they prove very productive.