THE FLORIDA VELVET BEAN.
me THE EDITOR Or THE “ SPECTATOR:9 SIR,—A most interesting letter on this subject from Captain. E. A. Wilson appeared in the Spectator of May 14th. But this letter leaves a reader in great doubt whether the bean in suitable for the average English climate. The writer says "It being an air-plant, it will do well in most any kind of soil in any of the States, North or South, that will grow corn." Again, "Plant seed in springtime same time as you do corn.
It is a good idea to drill or plant corn right in with bean-seed as a partial support to vine to keep pods off ground." From all the foregoing quotations, and especially from the last, I gather that the "corn" mentioned is not wheat, or rye, or anything that we commonly class in England as "corn," but is maize, or Indian corn, to which the word " corn " is commonly applied in the States. If this be so, then the statement that follows, viz., "It is not tropical, and will do well wherever corn will grow," conveys no assur- ance that it will succeed in an average English climate. It in now more than fifty years since Cobbett preached the growing of maize in England, and had specimens in a shop-window, opposite to the Mansion House ; but spite of all his efforts- the cultivation was, so far as I know, abandoned. I should be glad if any of your correspondents could express an opinion upon the question whether the English climate would suit the
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