[The high price demanded for saffron offers considerable temptation to adulteration, and this is not uncommonly taken advantage of. The stigmata of other plants, besides the true saffron crocus (_Crocus sativus_), are frequently mixed with those which are genuine; moreover, many other foreign substances are added, such as the florets of the safflower (_Carthamus tinctorius_), those of the marigold (_Calendula officinalis_), slices of the flower of the pomegranate, saffron from which the colouring has been previously extracted, and even fibres of smoked beef. Most of these adulterations may be detected by the action of boiling water, which softens and expands the fibres, thus exposing their true shape and nature. The cake saffron of commerce appears entirely composed of foreign substances. Great medicinal virtues were formerly attributed to saffron. Its principal use is now as a colouring matter.] FOOTNOTES [471] [The stigmata of Botanists.] [472] Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 6. Geopon. lib. xi. cap. 26, and Theophrast. Histor. Plant. lib. vi. cap. 6, where Joh. Bod. von Stapel, p. 661, has collected, though not in good order, every thing to be found in the ancients respecting saffron. The small aromatic threads, abundant in colour, the only parts of the whole plant sought after, were by the Greeks called γλωχῖνες, κροκίδες, or τρίχες; and by the Romans _spicæ_. They are properly the end of the pistil, which is cleft into three divisions. A very distinct representation of this part of the flower may be seen in plate 184 of Tournefort’s Institut. Rei Herbariæ, [or in Stephens and Churchill’s Medical Botany.] [473] On this account we often find in prescriptions, Recipe croci Orientalis.... [474] Jena, 1670, 8vo. [475] See Beroald’s Observations on the 54th chapter of the Life of Nero by Suetonius; and Spartian, in the Life of Adrian, chap. 19. [476] Lucan, in the ninth book of his Pharsalia, verce 809, describing how the blood flows from every vein of a person bit by a kind of serpent found in Africa, says that it spouts out in the same manner as the sweet-smelling essence of saffron issues from the limbs of a statue. [477] Petron. Satyr. cap. 60. [478] Of the method of preparing this salve or balsam, mentioned by Athenæus, Cicero, and others, an account is to be found in Dioscorides, lib. i. c. 26. [479] Plin. lib. xxix. cap. iv. [480] Martial, b. xiii. ep. 43, praises a cook who dressed the dugs of a sow with so much art and skill, that it appeared as if they still formed a part of the animal, and were full of milk. A dish of this sort is mentioned by Apicius, lib. vii. cap. 2. The same author gives directions, book vii. chap. i. for cooking that delicious dish of which Horace says, op. i. 15, 41, “Nil vulva pulchrius ampla.” Further information on this subject may be found in the notes to Pliny’s Epistles, lib. i. 15; Plin. lib. xi. c. 37; Martial. Epig. xiii. 56; and, above all, in Lottichii Commentar. in. Petronium, lib. i. cap. 18.