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commodity. But if a vent might be found, men would in 
Essex (about Saffron Walden), and in Cambridgeshire, revive 
the trade for the benefit of the setting of the poore on worke. 
So would they do in Herefordshire by Wales, where the best 
of all England is, in which place the soil yields the wilde 
Saffron commonly, which showeth the natural inclination of 
the same soile to the bearing of the right Saffron, if the soile 
■be manured and that way employed. ... It is reported at 
Saffron Walden that a pilgrim, proposing to do good to his 
countrey, stole a head of Saffron, and hid the same in his 
Palmer’s staffe, which he had made hollow before of purpose, 
and so he brought the root into this realme with venture of his 
life, for if he had bene taken, by the law of the countrey from 
whence it came, he had died for the fact.”— English Voiages , 
6°<r., vol. ii. From this account it seems clear that even in 
Hakluyt’s time Saffron had been so long introduced that the 
history of its introduction was lost; and I think it very 
probable that, as was suggested by Coles in his “Adam in 
Eden” (1657), we are indebted to the Romans for this, as 
for so many of our useful plants. But it is not a Roman or 
Italian plant. Spenser wrote of it as— 
“ Saffron sought for in Cilician soyle—” 1 
and Browne— 
“ Saffron confected in Cilicia”— Brit. Past., i. 2 } 
which information they derived from Pliny. It is supposed to 
be a native of Asia Minor, but so altered by long cultivation 
that it never produces seed either in England or in other parts 
1 “Cilician,” or “Corycean,” were the established classical epithets to 
use when speaking of the Saffron. Cowley quotes—• 
“ Corycii pressura Croci”— Lucan ; 
“ Ultima Corycio quse cadit aura Croco”— Martial “ 
and adds the note—“ Omnes Poetse hoc quasi solenni quodam Epitheto 
utuntur. Corycus nomen urbis et montis in Cilicia, ubi laudatissimus 
Crocus nascebatur.”— Plantarum, lib. i. 49. 
