Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1918 — EXPLAINING ANTICS OF BEAN [ARTICLE]

EXPLAINING ANTICS OF BEAN

Nothing Really Mysterious About Seeds Which Fumlbh Mexican Peons ' Cheap Gambling Paraphernalia. I’ ■ * One of the favorite amusements of the Mexican peon is the game he calls “los biincones,” which might be translated "the jumpers.” A circle of dusky laborers grouped about an apparently empty epace In the sunny dust is a characteristic sight south_of the Rio Grande. The objects of Interest, invisible to the casual eye, are the “brincones,’’ or jumping beans. The game Is one "calculated to appeal to the Mexican temperament, being a form of pure gambling associated with the Irreducible minimum of physical effort. To the visitor It- bears also a touch of mystery. The players draw a small circle In the dust and lay therein a number of _ little brown beans, which are really not beans at all, but the seeds of some native plant Exposed to the rays of the sun and .the solemn gaze of the players, after a time the beans begin to move. They 'turn, they stir, they actually hop about. The lard of chance consists in betting on which bean will, first jump out of the circle, and apparently the game is fair. There would seem to be no way of “framing” the mysterious beans. * . ! The Mexican neither knows nor careA why the beans jump, though their behavior is most unusual for members of the vegetable kingdom. Asked for an explanation, he will shrug and remark that It is the nature of “brincones” to jump.' Why question the wisdom of providence, which has seen fit to provide her children with a cheap and satisfactory apparatus for games of .chance? Science, however, steps in with the explanation that the innocent brown bean In question is the home of a Certain larvae, 'whose spasmodic movements early in life are responsible for the antics of its vegetable home.