in 1516. It was followed in 1523 by Fitzherbert's "Husbandry," of which four versions were printed. Then in 1525 came W(alter) C(ary's) "Herball" (three editions), "Jerome of Brunswick-Andrew," a folio printed in London in 1527; Macer's "Herbal,” 1535. The "Libellus" of William Turner appeared in 1548, "The Names of Herbes" in 1548, and "New Herball' in 1551, with a second part in 1562. In 1540 Andrew Borde brought out “ a Boke for to lerne a Man to be Wyse in buylding of his House." In 1573 came Thomas Tusser's "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," and in 1563 Thomas Hill produced "A Most Brief and Pleasaunt Treatyse teachynge how to Dress, Sowe and Set a Garden," and in 1568 "The Profytable Arte of Gardening," and he was possibly the author of "The Gardener's Labyrinth," London, 1577. In 1578 Dodoens-Lyte published at Antwerp "A Newe Herball," republished in 1586, 1595, and 1619. In 1579 William Langham produced "The Garden of Health," and in 1592 John Wolf brought out a little treatise (the unique property of Earl Crewe) entitled "Short Instructions Very Profitable and Necessary for all those that delight in Gardening."

John

Gerard's "Catalogue of Trees," another unique book now in the British Museum, is dated 1596, while his "Herball" appeared in 1597. In 1599 Dubravius published "A Newe Booke on Good Husbandry,” and Gardner's "Kitchen Garden "is said to have appeared in the same year, but no copy is known. These practically complete a list of the more important books of the period dealing with gardening and plants. Here it will be well to leave them. Elizabethan methods survived for some time, and it was not, perhaps, until the eighteenth century that pleached alleys," mounds and knotted beds fell out of favour. Nowadays there is an echo in the air of better ways. Such gardens as those of Mr. Freeman

66

Mitford at Batsford set before us the cultivation of flowers in Nature's methods, their native elegance unrestrained and unfettered by man. The leading idea is to copy Nature as near as may be, and discard the tiring, gaudy colouring and set lines of bedding plants, the straight rectangular walks and plots, and to have everywhere constant change of shape and colour, an orderly wilderness of bloom against a background of ever-varying green.

WITH

APRIL

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight.

Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 904.

ITH April the purple of the violets melts into the yellow of the primrose, the white of our Lady's smock, and the blue of the woodland scilla. If the winds be not chill and the sky palled in gray, Nature's beauties will fast respond to the spattering of April showers, and with the carols of the birds wake into life.

The flower of the month is undoubtedly the primOne quotation is worth giving :

rose.

Primrose, first-born child of Ver,
Merry spring-time's harbinger
With her bells dim.

Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd.

This reminds us of the German name for the flower, the Schlüssel Blumen (the key flower), the key with which our Lady unlocks the treasure-house of spring. Three times Shakespeare gives the flower the epithet of "pale," chiefly in the lines

Pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.

Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 122.

And again:

Thou shalt not lack

The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose.
Cymbeline, IV. ii. 220.

And once the word "pale" is replaced by "faint":

Where often you and I

Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie.

Midsummer-Night's Dream, I. i. 214.

Twice the primrose-decked way is used as a synonym for easy dalliance: Hamlet, I. iii. 50, and Macbeth, II. iii. 21.

Certes Shakespeare dearly loved the primrosedecked banks of his native lanes, where they still flourish in wonted luxuriance.

But the flower has a more than romantic interest: it is so variable, so tending to cross with its near relatives, that it has ever been a botanical puzzle. It is the Primula acaulis of Linn., the P. vulgaris of Huds., and found throughout Europe as far south as North Africa. It has a very marked stalked variety and two hybrids, while crosses with the oxslip and cowslip are met with in a wild state. It is, moreover, the parent of all the numerous variegated polyanthus flowers of our old-fashioned cottage gardens.

Its name is as much a difficulty with the etymologist as the plant itself is to the botanist, and it has passed, so says Prior, from flor di prima vera, through the Italian primaverola to the French primeverole, and thus through primerole to Spenser's "primrose," but was also used in the form " prymefor privet (Turner), and even Gerard calls privet "prim privet," and the Latin form primula seems to have been assigned by early writers to the daisy. There is little doubt Shakespeare stamped the name upon the flower now so called, and after his date it is rarely named by any other. Following the prim

rose

rose, in flower towards the end of the month and well into May, is another old favourite, the cowslip, the Primula veris of Linn., the P. officinalis of Jacq., found, like its cousin, throughout Europe, Siberia, and reaching into Western Asia and North Africa. It is identical with the Herba paralysis of Brunfels, and with the Verbasculum odoratum of Fuchsius.

This plant was well known to, and beloved of, the poet. Witness the care of his descriptions:

The freckled cowslip.-Henry V., V. ii. 49.

Cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip.-Cymbeline, II. ii. 37.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;

These be rubies, fairy favours.

And yet again the

Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 10.

Yellow cowslip cheeks.-Ibid., V. i. 339.

As in the case of the primrose and violet, the flower was used for household decoration. The poet

says:

The violets, cowslips, and the primroses
Bear to my closet.-Cymbeline, I. v. 85.

In the Warwickshire country of to-day the very best of wines made in the homesteads is that from the dried blossoms-the "pips," so called; and in many villages quite a harvest is made by the women and children in the cowslip-picking season.

As with the primrose, so with the cowslip: there is much doubt, never really well explained, as to the derivation of its names, whether they be cowslip or paigle. It should not be forgotten that the " pensioners" of the passage were a guard of gentlemen with peculiarly sumptuous livery of gold and jewels, which Shakespeare doubtless saw first at Kenilworth.