CCVIII.— THE PRIMROSE. 
Primula vulgaris Hudson. 
pRIMUI.sl, the little flower of spring, the early season, in Latin primum tempus, in 
French printemps , is as appropriate a name alike for Primrose and Cowslip as for 
the Daisy to which it seems to have been first applied. The Italian fior di prima 
vera became primaverola , in French primeverole , and in thirteenth and fourteenth 
century French and English alike primerole. A century later, the misunderstood 1 
gave place to s, and Daisy or Privet became the Primerose or earliest Rose of the year. 
Matthiolus in 1586 uses the name both for Daisy and Cowslip ; Parkinson in 1640 
for Daisy and Primrose. The Primrose, generally in flower in sheltered nooks by 
Christmas, is, indeed, as Milton calls it, a “ rathe ” or early flower. In Guernsey 
the name takes the pretty form of Pdquerolle , little Easter roses, and a local proverb 
runs “ I n’y a poui Noue sans se paquerolle ou p’tit agne ” : “There’s never a 
Christmas without its primrose or little lamb.” Coming in abundance when other 
flowers are yet scarce, when the first birds are singing, the first bees humming, and 
the first green leaves unfolding, it generally to-day brings with it suggestions of joy. 
When Perdita sings sadly of 
“ Pale Primroses 
That die unmarried ere they can behold 
Bold I hcebus in his strength,’* 
Shakespeare may have been mentally contrasting this flower, adapted mainly, perhaps, 
for pollination by night-flying moths, with his greater favourite, the more robust- 
seeming Cowslip. The Primrose, rejoicing in the rich humus of woods and flowering 
before the shade of the trees obstructs the sun, is the more generally distributed of 
the two species ; but the Cowslip, a clay-loving plant, though often absent from 
the sandy loams of the Midland Trias, flourishes near at hand on the clays of the 
Lias, so that it was, no doubt, familiar to the poet’s childhood at Stratford. The “eye,” 
or centre, of the Primrose flower is, indeed, marked with darker colour remarkable 
for its actinism, which makes photographs of the flower, unless taken on isochromatic 
plates, develop a black centre ; but these honey-guides are not so marked as the 
“cinque-spotted” “freckles,” “the crimson drops i’ the bottom of a Cowslip,” which 
seem so to have captivated the poet’s fancy. Of Titania, the Fairy Queen, he writes : 
u The Cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 
In their gold coats spots you see ; 
Those be rubies, fairy favours, 
In those freckles live their savours.” 
We cannot certainly locate the delicious perfume of the Cowslip as the poet 
does ; but how it suggests the rich pastures in the fresh air of spring ! How 
distinct too are the perfumes of the three related species that Linnaeus and Bentham 
would treat as mere varieties ! The Primrose gives a faint woodland scent, suggestive 
of the pale tint of the blossom, but, like that of other plants visited by the insects of 
