as potash and lime, than wheat, barley, or oats; but their constituents
are apt to provoke indigestion, whilst engendering flatulence
through sulphuretted hydrogen. They best suit persons who take
plenty of out-door exercise, but not those of sedentary habits. The
skins of parched Peas remain undigested when eaten cooked, and
are found in the excrements. These leguminous plants are less easily
assimilated than light animal food by persons who are not robust, or
laboriously employed, though vegetarians assert to the contrary.
Lord Tennyson wrote to such effect as the result of his personal
experience (in his dedication of _Tiresias_ to E. Fitzgerald):--

"Who live on meal, and milk, and grass:--
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
And seem'd at first 'a thing enskied'
(As Shakespeare has it)--airylight,
To float above the ways of men:
Then fell from that half spiritual height,
Until I tasted flesh again.
One night when earth was winter black,
And all the heavens were flashed in frost,
And on me--half asleep--came back
That wholesome heat the blood had lost."

But none the less does a simple diet foster spirituality of mind. "In
milk"--says one of the oldest Vedas--"the finer part of the curds,
when shaken, rises and becomes butter. Just so, my child, the finer
part of food rises when it is eaten, and becomes mind."

Old Fuller relates "In a general dearth all over [418] England
(1555), plenty of Pease did grow on the seashore, near Dunwich
(Suffolk), never set or sown by human industry; which being
gathered in full ripeness much abated the high prices in the markets,
and preserved many hungry families from famishing." "They do not
grow", says he, "among the bare stones, neither did they owe their
original to shipwrecks, or Pease cast out of ships." The Sea-side Pea
(_pisum maritimum_) is a rare plant.

PEACH.

The Peach (_Amygdabus Persica_), the apple of Persia, began to be
cultivated in England about 1562, or perhaps before then. Columella
tells of this fatal gift conveyed treacherously to Egypt in the first
century:--

"Apples, which most barbarous Persia sent,
With native poison armed."

The Peach tree is so well known by its general characteristics as not
to need any particular description. Its young branches, flowers, and
seeds, after maceration in water, yield a volatile oil which is
chemica