72 PEIMULACE^. 



wounds. The flowers were, after being well dried in the sun, made into a 

 conserve with sugar. An old writer, who says that this preserve was in 

 great fashion in his time, in Sussex, gives lengthened directions for preparing 

 it. The flowers arc still in use in villages for making a cosmetic ; and 

 Parkinson says of their juice, that it is "commended to cleanse spots or 

 marks on the face, whereof some gentlewomen have found good experience." 

 Though the leaves have little flavour, they were described as serving well 

 for a salad. The plant would probably aflford all the benefits which Chaucer 

 describes the maidens as bestowing : — • 



" And after that of Iierbes tliat there grew 

 They made, for blisters of the sun breuning, 

 Ointments very good, wholsoni, and trewe, 

 Where that they yede the sick fast anointing, 

 And after that they yede about gadering 

 Pleasant salides, which they made them ete, 

 For to refresh their gret unkindly heat." 



The leaves undoubtedly possess sedative properties, though not to the 

 same degree as those of the lettuce ; and the root, when first drawn from 

 the ground, has an odour of anise. Country people sometimes mix the 

 blossoms with tea, considering them both wholesome and refreshing. Cow- 

 slip wine is not uncommon in Warwickshire, though it is not so frequently 

 made in this country as it was by housewives half a century since. It is 

 very pleasant in flavour, and an excellent sedative. 



The Cowslip may be propagated by dividing the roots in autumn, and by 

 culture very handsome clumps of this flower may be produced, of much 

 larger size and richer hue than when growing wild. Old writers on gardens 

 call some of the varieties thus produced Curled Cowslips and Galligaskins. 

 They had, too, their feathered Cowslips, which were probably some kind of 

 fringed polyanthus ; their Eed Bird's-eye Cowslips, Green Cowslips, Rose 

 Cowslips, and Jackanapes on Horseback ; while one unfortunate flower was 

 called the Franticke or Foolish Cowslip. Cattle are not fond of Cowslips, 

 nor, indeed, of any of the Primrose tribe, but swine eat them. 



4. Bird's-eye Primrose (P. farinasa). — Leaves inversely egg-shaped 

 and lanceolate, mealy, crenate ; calyx oblong, egg-shaped, teeth linear ; limb 

 of corolla flat; segments inversely heart-shaped, rounded below, distant, 

 as long as the tube ; perennial. This is a most lovely little flower, something 

 like a miniature auricula. It blooms in July, and is of a pale lilac, purple, 

 or sometimes almost white, with a yellow centre. It is not unfrequent on 

 the mountainous pastures of the north of England, though on some less 

 elevated localities, long known to the botanist in Yorkshire, and other 

 counties, it has been eradicated to make room for the railway. It is rarely 

 found in Scotland. Sir Joseph Hooker mentions in his " Flora Antarctica, " 

 when referring to the Falkland Isles, that the heaths of grassy land were 

 spotted with a white Primrose nearly identical with this flower, and hardly 

 to be distinguished from it. 



5, Scottish Primrose (F. scdtica). — Leaves inversely egg-shaped and 

 lanceolate, toothed, mealy ; calyx bladder-like ; limb of the corolla flat, its 

 mouth glandular, the segments inversely heart-shaped, half the length of 

 the tube ; perennial. This is the loveliest of o\u- native Primroses. It is 



