The
plentiful pea-shaped flowers range in colour from apple-green, pale
yellow, orange to scarlet, and contain large quantities of nectar, which
attracts multitudes of birds and insects. Blacks regard this tree with
special favour and consideration. A casual remark, as I observed the
industry of insects about the flowers, that the bean-tree was good for
bees, elicited the scornful response, "Good for man!" The tree is of
graceful shape, the bole often pillar-like in its symmetry, and the wood
hard and durable and of pleasing colour, and so beautifully grained that
it is fast becoming popular for furniture and cabinet-making. It bears a
prolific crop of large beans, from two to five in each of its squat
pods, but they are, as Mr Standfast found the waters of Jordan, "to the
palate bitter, and to the stomach cold," and require special treatment
in order to eliminate a poisonous principle. Many chemists analysed the
beans (one finding that they may be converted into excellent starch)
without discovering any noxious element; but as horses, cattle, and pigs
die if they eat the raw bean, and a mere fragment is sufficient to give
human beings great pain, followed by most unpleasant consequences, the
research was continued, until within quite a recent date the presence of
saponin was detected.
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