309 
Dread of Saffron. 
Yet, knowing himself too-weak, for all his wile, 
Alone to match the scaly crocodile; 
Hee, with the wren, his mine doth conspire. 
The wren, who seeing, ©rest with sleeps desire 
Nile’s poys’ny pirate press the slimy shore, 
Suddenly comes, and hopping him before. 
Into his mouth he skips ; his teeth he pickles,' 
Cleanseth his palate, and his throat so tickles, 
That, charm’d with pleasure, the dull serpent gapes 
Wider and wider with his ugly chaps : 
Then, like a shaft, th’ ichneumon instantly 
Into the tyrants greedy gorge doth flie, 
And feeds upon that glutton, for whose riot 
All Nile’s fat margents scarce could furnish diet.” 
(.Divine Weehes , p. 51.) 
Lyly gives the crocodile credit for an elasticity which, 
to judge by some of the old pictures, was possessed by St. 
George’s Dragon, but assuredly by no other animal 
“ The crocodile, who, when one approcheth neere unto him, gather- 
eth up himselfe into the roundnesse of a ball, hut running from him, 
stretcheth him-self into the length of a tree.” ( Euphues , p. 364.) 
Thomas Fuller adds poison to the crocodile’s other 
weapons of destruction :— 
“ The sovereign power of genuine saffron is plainly proved by the 
antipathy of the crocodile thereunto : for the crocodile’s tears are never 
true, save when he is forced where saffron groweth (whence he hath his 
name of xp°X°Se^os, or the saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all 
poison, and it all antidote.” ( Worthies of England , vol. i. p. 336.) 
Tom Coryat also notices the dread which the crocodile 
was supposed to have of saffron :—• 
“ For which cause those amongst the ancient Egyptians that had the 
charge to looke to their bees in their gardens, were wont to smear their 
bee hives with saffron, which as soone as the crocodile perceived, he 
would presently run away.” ( Crudities , p. 182.) 
Unless crocodiles were armed with scales internally as 
well as externally, a hive full of bees must have been even 
more trying a meal than cold iron. 
