Gerard, "of a most perfect shining yellow colour, seeming
afar off to be a hot glowing coal of fire. That pleasant plant was sent
unto me from Robinus, of Paris, that painful and most curious searcher
of simples." From that beginning perhaps it has found its way into every
garden, for it increases rapidly, is very hardy, and its brightness
commends it to all. It is the "most gladsome of the early flowers. None
gives more glowing welcome to the season, or strikes on our first
glance with a ray of keener pleasure, when, with some bright morning's
warmth, the solitary golden fringes have kindled into knots of
thick-clustered yellow bloom on the borders of the cottage garden. At a
distance the eye is caught by that glowing patch, its warm heart open to
the sun, and dear to the honey-gathering bees which hum around the
chalices."--FORBES WATSON.

With this pretty picture I may well close the account of the Crocus, but
not because the subject is exhausted, for it is very tempting to go much
further, and to speak of the beauties of the many species, and of the
endless forms and colours of the grand Dutch varieties; and whatever
admiration may be expressed for the common yellow Dutch Crocus, the same
I would also give to almost every member of this lovely and cheerful
family.

FOOTNOTES:

[268:1] Fuller says of the crocodile--"He hath his name of
+chrocho-deilos+, or the Saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all
poison, and it all antidote."--_Worthies of England_, i, 336, ed. 1811.

[270:1] "Cilician," or "Corycean," were the established classical
epithets to use when speaking of the Saffron. Cowley quotes--

"Corycii pressura Croci"--LUCAN;

"Ultima Corycio quae cadit aura Croco"--MARTIAL;

and adds the note--"Omnes Poetae hoc quasi solenni quodam Epitheto
utuntur. Corycus nomen urbis et montis in Cilicia, ubi laudatissimus
Crocus nascebatur."--_Plantarum_, lib. i, 49.

[270:2] "Saffron is . . . a native of Cashmere, . . . and the . . .
Saffron Crocus and the Hemp plant have followed their (the Aryans)
migrations together throughout the temperate zone of the
globe."--BIRDWOOD, _Handbook to the Indian Court_, p. 23.

[271:1] "Our English hony and Safron is better than any that commeth
from any strange or foregn land."--BULLEIN, _Government of Health_,
1588.

[271:2] The arms of the borough of Saffron Walden are "three Saffron
flowers walled in."

SAMPHIRE.

_Edgar._