io6 SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
The passages from the poet are: 
How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, 
tickles these together ! 
Troilus and Cressida, V. ii. 55 ; 
and in the Merry Wives, V. v. 20 : 
Let the sky rain potatoes. 
To the order belong many of our well-known 
garden plants—tobacco, petunia, winter cherry, and 
tomato ; and among our wild ones none are more 
interesting than the thorn-apple, henbane, and bella¬ 
donna. 
Another vegetable grown on a large scale in our 
fields as food for cattle is the turnip and its allies. 
Only once is it mentioned, and that in the Merry 
Wives , III. iv. 90 : 
I had rather be set quick i’ the earth 
And bowl’d to death with turnips. 
As Ellacombe says (p. 816) : “ If we did not get 
the vegetable from the Romans, we got its name/’ 
Prior gives it as equivalent to the Latin terrce napus , 
and certainly in England its old name was nep, or 
nsep, but its scientific name is Brassica Rapa , L. The 
plant is considered native, but has a variety saliva , 
the cultivated plant, which is only naturalized. The 
rape (B. Napus) and the swede ( B . Rutabaga , D.C.) 
are also escapes of cultivation when met with 
apparently wild. The authors of “ Maison Rustique ” 
tells us that turnips are used as a cure for gout, and 
are also mingled with the juice of earthworms to 
harden steel. 
Fruits are the principal feature of the month. 
There is much to be done in the orchard and store¬ 
room, and although we have elected to consider the 
apple under the month in which its flowers appear. 
