P. sativum was known to Theophrastus; and De Candol1e points out that the word ‘ ‘ pison” or its equivalent occurs in the Albanian tongue as well as in Latin, whence he concludes that the pea was known to the Aryans, and was perhaps brought by them into Greece and Italy. Peas have been found in the Swiss lake-dwellings of the bronze period. The garden peas differ considerably in size, shape of pod, degree of productiveness, form and colour of seed, &c. The sugar peas are those in which the inner lining of the pod is very thin instead of being somewhat horny, so that the whole pod can be eaten. Unlike most papilionaceous plants, peaflowers are perfectly fertile without the aid of insects, and thus do not intercross so freely as most similar plants do. On the other hand, a case is known wherein the pollen from a purple-podded pea applied to the stigma of one of the green-podded sugar peas produced a purple pod, showing that not only the ovule but even the ovary was affected by the cross. The numerous varieties of peas in cultivation have been obtained by cross-fertilization, but chiefly by selection. Peas constitute a highly nutritious article of diet from the large quantity of nitrogenous materials they contain in addition to starchy and saccharine matters.

The Sweet Pea, cultivated for the beauty and fragrance of its flθλvers, is not a true Pisum, but a species of Lathynιs {L. odoratus), a native of southern Europe. The Chick Pea {Cicer arietinum), not cultivated in England, is still farther removed from the true peas. The Everlasting Pea of gardens is a species of Lathyrus, with very deep fleshy roots, bold foliage, and beautifu! but scentless flowers. L. latifolius, a British wild plant, is the source of most of the garden varieties.

PEABODY, George (1795-1869), philanthropist, was descended from an old yeoman family of Hertfordshire, England, named Pabody or Pebody, who, six generations before his birth, had emigrated to New England. He was born at Danvers (now Peabody), Massachusetts, 18th February 1795. The only regular education he received was at the district school, and when only eleven years of age he became apprentice at a grocery store. At the end of four years he became assistant to his brother, who kept a dry goods shop, and a year afterwards, on the shop being burned, to his uncle, who had a business in George Town, District of Columbia. After serving as a volunteer at Fort Warburton in the short war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, he became partner with Elisha Riggs in a dry goods store, Riggs furnishing the capital, while Peabody had the practical management. As bagman he travelled through the western wilds of New York and Pennsylvania and the plantations of Maryland and Virginia. Through his energy and skill the business increased •with astounding rapidity, and on the retirement of Riggs about 1830 Peabody found himself at the head of one of the largest mercantile concerns in the world. About 1837 he established himself in London as merchant and money-broker at Wanford Court, City, and in 1843 he withdrew from the concern in America. It is, however, as a sagacious and generous philanthropist that Peabody has made his name a household word. While holding aloof from the strife of politics in the United States, he was ready to give his native country the benefit of his business skill and the aid of his wealth in its financial difficulties. The number of his great benefactions to public objects is too great for bare mention here. It must suffice to name among the more important a gift of £25,000 for educational purposes at Danvers; of <£100,000 to found and endow an institution for science in Baltimore, a sum afterwards increased by a second donation of £100,000; of various sums to Harvard University; and of £350,000 for the erection of dwelling-houses for the working-classes in London, which sum was increased by his will to half a million. If this last benefaction has failed to produce the good results anticipated, this has been due to causes for which Peabody was not responsible, and which do not at all detract from the wise beneficence of the gift. He received from the Queen the offer of a baronetcy, but declined it. In 1867 the United States Congress awarded him a special vote of thanks for his many large gifts to public institutions in America. He died at Eaton Square, London, 14th November 1869.

The nectarine is a variation from the peach, mainly characterized by the circumstance that, while the skin of the ripe fruit is downy in the peach, it is shining and destitute of hairs in the nectarine. That there is no essential difference between the two is, however, shown by the facts that the seeds of the peach will produce nectarines, and vice versa, and that it is not very uncommon, though still exceptional, to see peaches and nectarines on the same branch, and fruits which combine in themselves the characteristics of both nectarines and peaches. The blossoms of the peach are formed the autumn previous to their expansion, and this fact, together with the peculiarities of their form and position, requires to be borne in mind by the gardener in his pruning and training operations, as mentioned in Horticulture (vol. xii. pp. 272, 273). The only point of practical interest requiring mention here is the very singular fact attested by all peach-growers, that, while certain peaches are liable to the attacks of a parasitic fungus known as mildew, others are not, showing a difference in constitution analogous to that observed in the case of human beings, some of whom will readily succumb to particular diseases, while others seem proof against their attacks. In the case of the peach this peculiarity is in some way connected with the presence of small glandular outgrowths on the stalk, or at the base of the leaf. Some peaches have globular, others reniform glands, others none at all, and these latter trees are much more subject to mildew than are those provided with glands.

The history of the peach, almond, and nectarine is interesting and important as regards the question of the origin of species and the production and perpetuation of varieties. As to the origin of the peach two views are held, that of Alphonse de Candolle, who attributes all cultivated varieties to a distinct species, probably of Chinese origin, and that adopted by many naturalists, but more especially by Darwin, who looks upon the peach as a modification of the almond. The importance of the subject demands that a summary of the principal facts and inferences bearing on this question should be given. In the first place, the peach as we now know it has been nowhere recognized in the wild state. In the few instances where it is said to have been found wild the probabilities are that the tree was an escape from cultivation. Aitchison, however, gathered in the Hazárdarakht ravine in Afghanistan a form with different-shaped fruit from that of the almond, being larger and flatter. “The surface of the fruit,” he observes, “resembles that of the peach in texture and colour; and the nut is quite distinct from that of 419 [the wild almond]. The whole shrub resembles more what one might consider a wild form of the peach than that of the almond.” It is admitted, however, by all competent botanists that the almond is wild in the hotter and drier parts of the Mediterranean and Levantine regions. Aitchison also mentions the almond as wild in some parts of Afghanistan, where it is known to the natives as “bédám,” the same word that they apply to the cultivated almond. The branches of the tree are carried by the priests in religious ceremonies. It is not known as a wild plant in China or Japan.

As to the nectarine, of its origin as a variation from the peach there is abundant evidence, as has already been mentioned; it is only requisite to add the very important fact that the seeds of the nectarine, even when that nectarine has been produced by bud-variation from a peach, will generally produce nectarines, or, as gardeners say, “come true.”

Darwin brings together the records of several cases, not only of gradations between peaches and nectarines, but also of intermediate forms between the peach and the almond. So far as we know, however, no case has yet been recorded of a peach or a nectarine producing an almond, or vice versa, although if all have had a common origin such an event might be expected. Thus the botanical evidence seems to indicate that the wild almond is the source of cultivated almonds, peaches, and nectarines, and consequently that the peach was introduced from Asia Minor or Persia, whence the name Persica given to the peach; and Aitchison’s discovery in Afghanistan of a form which reminded him of a wild peach lends additional force to this view.

On the other hand, Alphonse de Candolle, from philological and other considerations, considers the peach to be of Chinese origin.

The peach has not, it is true, been found wild in China, but it has been cultivated there from time immemorial; it has entered into the literature and folk-lore of the people; and it is designated by a distinct name, “to” or “tao,” a word found in the writings of Confucius five centuries before Christ, and even in other writings dating from the 10th century before the Christian era. Though now cultivated in India, and almost wild in some parts of the northwest, and, as we have seen, probably also in Afghanistan, it has no Sanskrit name; it is not mentioned in the Hebrew text of the Scriptures, nor in the earliest Greek times. Xenophon makes no mention of the peach, though the Ten Thousand must have traversed the country where, according to some, the peach is native, but Theophrastus, a hundred years later, does speak of it as a Persian fruit, and De Candolle suggests that it might have been introduced into Greece by Alexander. According to his view, the seeds of the peach, cultivated for ages in China, might have been carried by the Chinese into Kashmir, Bokhara, and Persia between the period of the Sanskrit emigration and the Graeco-Persian period. Once established, its cultivation would readily extend westward, or, on the other hand, by Cabul to north-western India, where its cultivation is not ancient. While the peach has been cultivated in China for thousands of years, the almond does not grow wild in that country, and its introduction is supposed not to go back farther than the Christian era.

On the whole, we should be inclined to attribute greater weight to the evidence from botanical sources than to that derived from philology, particularly since the discovery both of the wild almond and of a form like a wild peach in Afghanistan. It may, however, well be that both peach and almond are derived from some preexisting and now extinct form whose descendants have spread over the whole geographic area mentioned; but of course this is a mere speculation, though indirect evidence in its support might be obtained from the nectarine, of which no mention is made in ancient literature, and ιvhich, as we have seen, originates from the peach and reproduces itself by seed, thus offering the characteristics of a species in the act of developing itself. (Μ. T. Μ. )