Notes and Illustrations. 257 
the effect of getting them into such condition as better to please 
the butchers’ eyes. 
33. 36. ‘“Bulchin,” a double diminutive=Jdu//-ock-in, cf. man- 
tk-1n. 
“For ten mark men sold a little dudchin ; 
Litille less men tolde a bouke of a motoun; 
Men gaf fiveten schillynges for a goos or a hen.” —R. de 
Brunne’s Chronicle, ed. Hearne, i. 174. See also Langtoft, p. 174, 
and Middleton, iii. 524. : 
34. 2. “Apricot;” in Shakspere, and in other writers of that 
century, apricock ; in older writers abricot and abrecocke ; from L. 
preécoqua or precocia=early, from the fruit having been considered 
to bé an early peach. A passage in Pliny (Hist. Nat. xv. 12) ex- 
plains its name: ‘‘ Post autumnum maturescunt Persica, zstate 
preécocia, intra xxx annos reperta.” Martial also refers to it in the 
following words: 
‘* Vilia matexius fueramus przecoqua ramis, 
Nunc in adoptivis persica cara sumus.”—Liber xiii. 
Ep. 46. The English, although they take their word from the 
French, at first restored the &, and afterwards adopted the French 
termination, apricot.—See a paper on the word in N. & Q. for No- 
vember 23, 1850. ‘‘I-account the White peare-plum stocks the best 
to Lnoculate Aprecock buds upon, although they may be done upon 
other Plum-stocks with good successe, if they be good juycie stocks, 
able to give a good nourishment, for Aprecock trees require much 
nourishment.”—Austen’s Treatise on Fruit Trees, 1657, p. 57. 
Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) gives, ‘‘Abricot: m. The Abricot, or Apricocke 
plum.” Minsheu (Span. Dict. 1599) has, ‘‘ Albarcoque, or Alvar- 
coque, m. an apricocke.” Compare Midsummer Night’s Dream, 
iii. 1.169: ‘‘ Feed him with apricocks and dewberries”; and Rich. 
I]. Act iii. sc. 4, 29: ‘Go bind you up yon dangling apricocks.” 
34. 4. ‘ Boollesse.” In the Grete Herball do/ays, in Prompt. 
Parv. do/as. Prunus communis, Huds.; var. insititia, L. In Bacon’s 
Essays xlvi. the name is spelt ‘‘ dudlzses.” 
34. 5. ‘“‘Cheries.” Austen, in his Treatise on Fruit Trees, Ox- 
ford, 1657, p. 56, enumerates the following kinds of cherries: 
“The Flanders Cherry, most generally planted, is a great bearing 
fruit. The J/ay Cherries are tender, and the trees must be set in a 
warm place. The Black-hart Cherry, a very speciall fruit, and a great 
bearing fruit, and doubtlesse exceeding proper to presse for wine 
either to drink of itselfe, or to mix the juyce with C7der to give it a 
colour as Clarret-wine, it being of a deepe red, and a small quantity 
of it will colour a gallon of Czder or White wine. There is a Cherry 
we call the great bearing Cherry of M. Milleu. It may very well be 
called the great bearer, for the trees seldome fayle of great store of 
fruits, although in a cold and sharp spring.” 
34. 6, “Chestnuts.” Often spelt, but improperly, chesnut, as 
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