_Peas_ and _Beans_ when dried are less digestible and healthful than when eaten green, as the skin becomes hard, and unless removed, as it can be by rubbing through a sieve for soups, will, with many people, produce flatulency, constipation, and often severe colic. But green or dried, almost every sort of pulse will furnish excellent food for most of our domestic animals, and is also considered very desirable to alternate with other crops, for, if corn or grain is raised year after year, on the same piece of land, it will in a short time wear out the soil; but pulse does not impoverish the land, and therefore may be grown on fields that require rest from more exhausting crops. We learn that the time of the discovery of peas and beans has not been satisfactorily ascertained, but they were in early times extensively cultivated, especially the _pea_, in India, China and Japan, although evidently not a native of any of the extreme warm climates. When the English were besieging a castle in Lathian, in 1299, they were well pleased to supply their exhausted stores with this kind of pulse, which grew in that vicinity abundantly, and doubtless, on learning its nutritious properties, gladly introduced it into their own country. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign, her table was supplied with peas from Holland; fit food, says one of the writers of that time, for royal ladies, because “it was brought so far and cost so dear.” Now, under careful and more enlightened culture, the varieties of peas raised in this country and throughout Europe are numerous. To speak of them all and of the whole family of pulse would require a volume. But much depends on the section in which the different varieties are raised, for, as with most kinds of produce, that which in one locality would prove most excellent, when transferred to another will become quite inferior. The _Chick-pea_ is small and not very digestible. It will not boil soft, but, like some of the lentils, is parched, and in Egypt and Syria sold in the shops to travellers, by whom it is greatly esteemed, because while passing through the deserts it occupies little room and needs no preparation. Youmans says that it will sustain more life, weight for weight, than any other kind of food, and that peas and beans are ranked first among the concentrated, strength-imparting food; but although strength-giving, we do not think it easily digested, unless eaten while fresh and tender, and cooked with care. Some kinds of peas are prepared by the Chinese as a _vegetable cheese_.