160 WILD FLOWERS. 



carried to the town of Kashmir before the prized 

 anthers are extracted. Hakluyt states, and suc- 

 ceeding writers follow him, that the cultivation 

 of the saffron was introduced into England in the 

 reign of Edward III. by a pilgrim, who, being a 

 native of Saffron Walden,* brought a bulb of the 

 precious crocus to his native place. This was done 

 " with venture of his life ; for if he had been taken, 

 by the law of the country from whence it came, he 

 had died for the fact/' In order to bestow this bene- 

 fit on his native district he had cunningly hollowed 

 out the end of his palmer's staff, so as to hide within 

 it "the precious plant." Percy, however, shews that 

 it was imported in the form of a condiment at an 

 earlier period than this, as it is mentioned in the 

 list of the charges of the feast of Ralph Bourne, at 

 Canterbury.f It is curious that the saffron grown 

 in England is now esteemed the best, though cus- 

 tom still confines our physicians to the formula, J 

 " recipe croci orientalis" in their prescriptions. In 

 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it became one 

 of the most important and valuable crops of Western 

 Europe ; and even so late as the year 1735, Estiene, 

 in his " Apologie pour Herodote," affirms that saf- 

 fron must not only be put into all Lent soups, 

 sauces, and dishes/' but adds, that " without saffron 

 we cannot have well-cooked peas." This use of saf- 

 fron in Lent was for the purpose of keeping up the 

 "animal spirits," which long-continued fasting re- 



* Hence the prefix to its name, f "Lei Col." vol. v. 6, 35. 



J It is now much circumscribed as to the district of its culti- 

 vation in England, being hardly grown in more than three or 

 four parishes in Cambridgeshire. 



