226 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



authority on fruit-trees also mentions the " Grosse 

 Reinette d'Angleterre." The more delicate apples 

 for the table, such as the pippins, were probably 

 very little known here till the latter part of the 

 sixteenth centurj'. Fuller states that one Leonard 

 Maschal, in the sixteenth year of the rc\gn of Henry 

 VIII., brou2:lit pippins from over sea, and planted 

 them at Pliunstead in Sussex. Pippins are so called 

 because the trees were raised from the pips, or seeds ; 

 and bore the ajjples which gave them celebrity, with- 

 out graftinjr. In the thirty-seventh year of the same 

 king we tind the barkins; of apple-trees declared a fe- 

 lony ; and the passing of the law had probably a rela- 

 tion to the more extended growth of the fruit through 

 the introduction of pippins. ' Costard-monger' is an 

 old English term for the dealers in vegetables, derived 

 from their principal commodity of apples ; the cos- 

 tard being a large ap])le, round and bulky as the 

 head, or ' costard.' If we may deduce any meaning 

 from this name, which is the same as ' coster,' it 

 would appear that the costard, or large apple, was 

 the sort in common use, and that hence the name of 

 the variety became synonymous with that of the 

 species ; the more delicate sorts were luxuries un- 

 known to the ordinary consumers of our native fruits, 

 till they were rendered common by the planting of 

 orchards in Kent, Sussex, and other parts of the 

 kingdom. 



The growth of the more esteemed apple-trees had 

 made such a general progress in half a century, that 

 we tind Shakspeare putting these words in the mouth 

 of Justice Shallow, in his invitation to Falstali : 

 " You shall see mine orchard, where, in an arbour, we 

 will eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting.'' Sir 

 Hugh Evans, in the ' .Merry Wives of Windsor,' says, 

 *' I will make au end of my dinner— there's pippins 



