Now the bright star, day's harbinger Comes dancing from the East and leads with her The flow'ry May, who, from her green lap, throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. And again, Thomas Carew: Ask me why I send you here The firstling of the infant year? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, all bepearled with dew? I straight whisper in your ears: The sweets of Love are wash'd with tears Ask me why this flower doth show So yellow, green and sickly, too? Ask me why the stalk is weak And, bending, yet it doth not break? I will answer: these discover What doubts and fears are in a lover. [21] "Cymbeline"; Act IV, Scene II. [22] Act IV, Scene III. [23] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act I, Scene I. The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their peculiar charm. Parkinson writes: "We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often furnished into divers countries to their good content. "All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green. The name of _Primula veris_, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on those that I distinguish for _Paralyses_, or Cowslips. All these plants are called most usually in Latin _Primulæ veris_, _Primulæ pretenses_ and _Primulæ silvarum_, because they shew by their flowering the new Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as _Herba Paralysis_, _Arthritica_, _Herba Sancti Petri_, _Claues Sancti Petri_, _Verbasculum odoratum_, _Lunaria arthritica_, _Phlomis_, _Alisma silvarum_ and _Alismatis alterum genus_. Some have distinguished them by calling the Cowslips _Primula Veris Elatior_, that is the Taller Primrose, and the other _Humilis_, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose. "Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears[24] are, which hath caused the names of _Arthritica Paralysis_ and _Paralytica_ to be given them." [24] Auriculas.