40 CULTIVATION OF SAFFRON IN FRANCE. 
should be entire." Little or nothing of the yellow style 
should be left attached to the stigma. In this way the 
saffron has a better appearance and fetches a higher price. 
On the following day it is dried on a hairseive over a char- 
coal fire ; and placed in boxes without compression. After 
a few hours it becomes oily and flexible, and can then be 
pressed into well-closed boxes. 
Most of the Austrian saffron is sold at Krems on the 28th 
of October. Its price is from 30 to 32 fl. [=36—38 fl. 24 
kr. Rhenish] per pound. 
After the crop of the first year, the green leaves are left 
growing till the spring of the next year, and in June, when 
they begin to wither and to become yellow at the top, they 
are mowed as food for cattle. The little bulb (KndllchenJ 
which in the first year had formed itself on the parent bulb, 
and from which a little tube, with or without flower, had 
already grown, in the autumn of the second year, goes on 
swelling till the spring. About Whitsuntide, the new bulb 
(Kiel) called Kindel, is perfect. If every thing goes on 
well, the saffron-garden will, in the autumn of the second 
year, contain two or three times the quantity of bulbs (each 
bearing two or three flowers) originally planted. If the 
bulbs are left for a third crop, nothing else is to be done but 
what was required after the first, namely, mowing the grass 
and carefully removing the weeds in July. It is, however, 
remarkable, that neither bulbs nor flowers multiply in the 
third year. 
The bulbs having now yielded saffron for two, three, or 
four years, are removed about Whitsuntide, when the new 
bulb (Kiel) is fully developed, the saffron-grass gathered, 
and the old bulb quite disappeared. By means of a coarse 
seive they are cleaned of the adhering mould, and stored up 
in an airy barn or loft. 
Three diseases are known to attack the bulbs, The first 
is the rot (Faulniss,) which, though visible externally, de- 
