SAFFRON.
Crocus sativus, the saffron plant, has been noticed under that head. It is a native of Asia Minor, naturalized in many parts of Europe, and cultivated in Persia and Kashmir. The Chinese obtain it from Tibet. It is brought to India from Great Britain, the seaports of the Red Sea, Persia, and Kashmir. The dried stigmata of the flower are picked out, dried ou paper either in a kiln or by the sun. If compressed into cakes, it is called cake saffron. Hay saffron, that usually met with, consists of the stigmas, each about an inch and a half long. One grain of good saffron con tains the stigmata and styles of nine flowers, so that one ounce of saffron is equal to 4000 flowers. The dried pistils, compressed into firrn cakes or masses, are termed in India rootla saffron. Cake saffron, as now met with, is prepared frorn the florets of the safflower. Saffron is used in rnedi eine, and as a dye, and in India also by women to tinge the skin of the body of a light-yellow colour, but the aniline dyes are everywhere dis placing it. To put on the saffron robe is the sign
of no quarter ' with the Rajput warrior. It is employed as a seasoning in cookery, also to colour confectionery, liquors, varnishes, and it is used to a small extent by painters and dyers. The colour ing ingredient is a peculiar principle, to which the name of polychroite has been given. It possesses the properties of being totally destroyed by the action of the solar rays, colouring in small quan tity a large body of water, and of forming blue or green tints when treated with sulphuric and nitric acid with sulphate of iron. In the Arabian and Hindu schools of medicine, it con tinues to be used. The Arabians class it amongst their Mosebetat (Hypnotica),Mokewyat (Cardiaca), and Mufettchat (Deobstruentia).