(1)	Queen.	The Violets, Cowslips, and the Primroses, Bear to my closet.
Cymbeline, act i, sc. 5 (83).
(2)	Queen.	I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as Primrose with blood-drinking sighs, And all to have the noble duke alive.
2nd Henry VI, act iii, sc. 2 (62).
(3)	Arviragus.	Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose.
Cymbeline, act iv, sc. 2 (220).
(4)	Hermia.	In the wood where often you and I Upon faint Primrose-beds were wont to lie.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act i, sc. 1 (214).
(5)	Perdita.	Pale Primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength.
Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 4 (122).
(6)	Ophelia.	Like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the Primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede.
Hamlet, act i, sc. 3 (49).
(7)	Porter.	I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the Primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.
Macbeth, act ii, sc. 3 (20).
(8)		Primrose, first-born child of Ver Merry spring-time's harbinger, With her bells dim.
Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song.
(9)		Witness this Primrose bank whereon I lie.
Venus and Adonis (151).

Whenever we speak of spring flowers, the first that comes into our minds is the Primrose. Both for its simple beauty and for its early arrival among us we give it the first place over

It is a plant equally dear to children and their elders, so that I cannot believe that there is any one (except Peter Bell) to whom

rather I should believe that W. Browne's "Wayfaring Man" is a type of most English countrymen in their simple admiration of the common flower—

Britannia's Pastorals, i, 5.

It is the first flower, except perhaps the Daisy, of which a child learns the familiar name; and yet it is a plant of unfailing interest to the botanical student, while its name is one of the greatest puzzles to the etymologist. The common and easy explanation of the name is that it means the first Rose of the year, but (like so many explanations that are derived only from the sound and modern appearance of a a name) this is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this—"The old name was Prime Rolles—or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., primeverole: It., primaverola, diminutive of prima vera from flor di prima vera, the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into primerolles, and this into primrose."—Dr. Prior. The name Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was an old English word, used to show excellence—

Spenser, Colin Clout.

Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar—Februarie.

It was also a flower name, but not of our present Primrose, but of a very different plant. Thus in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we have "hoc ligustrum, a Primerose;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date we have "hoc ligustrum, A^ce a Prymrose;" and in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," "Prymerose, primula, calendula, ligustrum"—and this name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration into Shakespeare's time. Turner in 1538 says, "ligustrum arbor est non herba ut literatoru vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam a Prymerose." In Tusser's "Husbandry" we have "set Privie or Prim" (September Abstract), and—

And so it is described by Gerard as the Privet or Prim Print (i.e., primÉ printemps), and even in the seventeenth century, Cole says of ligustrum, "This herbe is called Primrose." When the name was fixed to our present plant I cannot say, but certainly before Shakespeare's time, though probably not long before. It is rather remarkable that the flower, which we now so much admire, seems to have been very much overlooked by the writers before Shakespeare. In the very old vocabularies it does not at all appear by its present Latin name, Primula vulgaris, but that is perhaps not to be wondered at, as nearly all the old botanists applied that name to the Daisy. But neither is it much noticed by any English name. I can only find it in two of the vocabularies. In an English Vocabulary of the fourteenth century is "HÆc pimpinella, A^e primerolle," but it is very doubtful if this can be our Primrose, as the Pimpernel of old writers was the Burnet. Gower mentions it as the flower of the star Canis Minor—

Conf. Aman. lib. sept. (3, 130. Paulli).

And in the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth (13th century) is—

I should think there is no doubt this is our Primrose. Then we have Chaucer's description of a fine lady—

The Milleres Tale.

I have dwelt longer than usual on the name of this flower, because it gives us an excellent example of how much literary interest may be found even in the names of our common English plants.

But it is time to come from the name to the flower. The English Primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented in England by the Primrose, the Oxlip, the Cowslip, and the Bird's-eye Primrose of the North of England and Scotland. All the members of the family, whether British or exotic, are noted for the simple beauty of their flowers, but in this special character there is none that surpasses our own. "It is the very flower of delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing, and the first bees humming, and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods; and it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the weather will permit."—Forbes Watson. It is this character of cheerfulness that so much endears the flower to us; as it brightens up our hedgerows after the dulness of winter, the harbinger of many brighter perhaps, but not more acceptable, beauties to come, it is the very emblem of cheerfulness. Yet it is very curious to note what entirely different ideas it suggested to our forefathers. To them the Primrose seems always to have brought associations of sadness, or even worse than sadness, for the "Primrose paths" and "Primrose ways" of Nos. 6 and 7 are meant to be suggestive of pleasures, but sinful pleasures.

Spenser associates it with death in some beautiful lines, in which a husband laments the loss of a young and beautiful wife—

Daphnidia, 232.

In another place he speaks of it as "the Primrose trew"—Prothalamion; but in another place his only epithet for it is "green," which quite ignores its brightness—

Shepherd's Calendar—April.

Shakespeare has no more pleasant epithets for our favourite flower than "pale," "faint," "that die unmarried;" and Milton follows in the same strain yet sadder. Once, indeed, he speaks of youth as "Brisk as the April buds in Primrose season" ("Comus"); but only in three passages does he speak of the Primrose itself, and in two of these he connects it with death—

On the Death of a Fair Infant.

His third account is a little more joyous—

On May Morning.

And nearly all the poets of that time spoke in the same strain, with the exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers. Jonson spoke of it as "the glory of the spring" and as "the spring's own spouse." Giles Fletcher says—

And Phineas Fletcher—

I can only refer very shortly to the botanical interest of the Primula, and that only to direct attention to Mr. Darwin's paper in the "Journal of the LinnÆan Society," 1862, in which he records his very curious and painstaking inquiries into the dimorphism of the Primula, a peculiarity in the Primula that gardeners had long recognized in their arrangement of Primroses as "pin-eyed" and "thrum-eyed." It is perhaps owing to this dimorphism that the family is able to show a very large number of natural hybrids. These have been carefully studied by Professor Kerner, of Innspruck, and it seems not unlikely that a further study will show that all the European so-called species are natural hybrids from a very few parents.

Yet a few words on the Primrose as a garden plant. If the Primrose be taken from the hedges in November, and planted in beds thickly in the garden, they make a beautiful display of flowers and foliage from February till the beds are required for the summer flowers; and there are few of our wild flowers that run into so many varieties in their wild state. In Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire I have seen the wild Primrose of nearly all shades of colour, from the purest white to an almost bright red, and these can all be brought into the garden with a certainty of success and a certainty of rapid increase. There are also many double varieties, all of which are more often seen in cottage gardens than elsewhere; yet no gardener need despise them.

One other British Primrose, the Bird's-eye Primrose, almost defies garden cultivation, though in its native habitats in the north it grows in most ungenial places. I have seen places in the neighbourhood of the bleak hill of Ingleborough, where it almost forms the turf; yet away from its native habitat it is difficult to keep, except in a greenhouse. For the cultivation of the other non-English species, I cannot do better than refer to an excellent paper by Mr. Niven in the "The Garden" for January 29, 1876, in which he gives an exhaustive account of them.

I am not aware that Primroses are of any use in medicine or cookery, yet Tusser names the Primrose among "seeds and herbs for the kitchen," and Lyte says "the Cowslips, Primroses, and Oxlips are now used dayly amongst other pot herbes, but in physicke there is no great account made of them." They occur in heraldy. The arms of the Earls of Rosebery (Primrose) are three Primroses within a double tressure fleury counter-fleury, or.

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