bum;" but from the figure it is very certain
that the plant was not a Rheum. After the time of Parkinson, it was
largely grown for the sake of producing the drug, and it is still grown
in England to some extent for the same purpose, chiefly in the
neighbourhood of Banbury; though it is doubtful whether any of the
species now grown in England are the true species that has long produced
Turkey Rhubarb. The plant is now grown most extensively as a spring
vegetable, though I cannot find when it first began to be so used.
Parkinson evidently tried it and thought well of it. "The leaves have a
fine acid taste; a syrup, therefore, made with the juice and sugar
cannot but be very effectual in dejected appetites." Yet even in 1807
Professor Martyn, the editor of "Millar's Dictionary," in a long article
on the Rhubarb, makes no mention of its culinary qualities, but in 1822
Phillips speaks of it as largely cultivated for spring tarts, and forced
for the London markets, "medical men recommending it as one of the most
cooling and wholesome tarts sent to table."

As a garden plant the Rhubarb is highly ornamental, though it is seldom
seen out of the kitchen garden, but where room can be given to them,
Rheum palmatum or Rheum officinale, will always be admired as some of
the handsomest of foliage plants. The finest species of the family is
the Himalayan Rheum nobile, but it is exceedingly difficult to grow.
Botanically the Rhubarb is allied to the Dock and Sorrel, and all the
species are herbaceous.

FOOTNOTES:

[241:1] Quoted in Furnival's forewords to Boorde's "Introduction to
Knowledge," p. 56.

RICE.

_Clown._

Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast?
Three pound of sugar, five pound of Currants, Rice----What
will this sister of mine do with Rice?[242:1]

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (38).

Shakespeare may have had no more acquaintance with Rice than his
knowledge of the imported grain, which seems to have been long ago
introduced into England, for in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we
have "Hoc risi, indeclinabile, Ryse." And in the "Promptorium
Parvulorum," "Ryce, frute. Risia, vel risi, n. indecl. secundum quosdam,
vel risium, vel risorum granum (rizi vel granum Indicum)." Turner was
acquainted with it: "Ryse groweth plentuously in watery myddowes between
Myllane and Pavia."[242:2] And Shakespeare may have seen the plant, for
Gerard