mrose, 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.

PRUNES, _see_ PLUMS.

PUMPION.

_Mrs. Ford._

Go to, then. We'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross
watery Pumpion.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iii, sc. 3 (42).

The old name for the Cucumber (in AElfric's "Vocabulary") is hwer-hwette,
_i.e._, wet ewer, but Pumpion, Pompion, and Pumpkin were general terms
including all the Cucurbitaceae such as Melons, Gourds, Cucumbers, and
Vegetable Marrows. All were largely grown in Shakespeare's days, but I
should think the reference here must be to one of the large useless
Gourds, for Mrs. Ford's comparison is to Falstaff, and Gourds were grown
large enough to bear out even that comparison. "The Gourd groweth into
any forme or fashion you would have it, . . . being suffered to clime
upon an arbour where the fruit may hang; it hath beene seene to be nine
foot long." And the little value placed upon the whole tribe helped to
bear out the comparison. They were chiefly good to "cure copper faces,
red and shining fierce noses (as red as red Roses), with pimples,
pumples, rubies, and such-like precious faces." This was Gerard's
account of the Cucumber, while of the Cucumber Pompion, which was
evidently our Vegetable Marrow, and of which he has described and
figured the variety which we now call the Custard Marrow, he says, "it
maketh a man apt and ready to fall into the disease called the colericke
passion, and of some the felonie."

Mrs. Ford's comparison of a b