June or July, the workman opens with his
spade a straight trench some seven inches
deep. It must not be less, because the roots
rise annually by the height of their own thickness.
He is followed by a woman, or a
child, who puts the bulbs in the trench an
inch apart from each other. He then opens
another trench, six inches from the first,
shovelling the earth into the former one, and
so on till the field is complete. Practice
makes his work so perfect that the rows of
flowers,though drawn by the eye alone, come
up as regularly as if they were planted by
line. After a warm September shower, the
blossoms start up like regiments of light
purple Jacks-in-the-box; every morning the
saffron-fields are covered with a fresh carpet.
The cultivators have no rest either by night
or day; and it will happen that, in spite of
all their industry, they lose a portion of their
crop. And this work lasts three weeks or a
month. At daybreak, and before the dew is
gone, the saffron-gatherers, mostly women,
speed to the fields with small baskets and
large hampers, each furnished with handles.
They set their feet on either side of the rows
of saffron, and gather the flowers by breaking
them off with a clever twist just below the
cup of the blossom, to make sure of the pistil
as well as the petals. When the right hand
is full, it is emptied into the basket held in
the left hand; the baskets-full are emptied
into the hampers; the hampers-full are
carried to the house. The saffron-girls ply
their task with such rapidity, that the eye
can scarcely follow the hand of a skilful
gatheress.

In the house, another set of workwomen are
busy, seated before large tables on which the
flowers are spread, each with a plate on her
right hand. One by one the flowers are
picked, their tube broken, the stigmas seized
and tossed into the plate. A clever picker
will produce a pound of crude saffron at the
end of her day's work. But, though the
labour is light, it is not exactly plain sailing.
The odour of saffron affects many persons
with drowsiness and fainting-fits. Even in
the open air, the gatherers are frequently
attacked by the overpowering influence of
the perfume given out; while the women
who separate the pistil from the petal of the
flowers are obliged to keep up a strong
current of air in the room where they are at
work, and even then are often compelled to
leave their task, and recover themselves in
the open air. As the saffron is picked, it is
dried over a charcoal fire, in earthen vessels
or in sieves, according to the local custom, by
the master or the mistress themselves, who
dare not trust so delicate and dangerous an
operation to stranger hands. When the
blossoms are over, the growth of the leaves
has to be encouraged and protected. If
cattle or sheep are suffered to eat them, it is
all over with next year's flowers. Even
hares and rabbits are forbidden to indulge
their appetite for the grass of saffron, which,
after remaining green all winter, withers
naturally towards the end of May. We
should not be living in civilised Europe, if
saffron were not adulterated. Some peasants
increase the bulk of their harvest by the aid
of Carthamus, or bastard saffron. Most of
them put it into a cellar, to increase its
weight, before selling it to the wholesale
dealer. What the wholesale dealer does, is
best known to himself; but the consumer is
sometimes supplied with a rotten sample.

Saffron is a drug now struggling hard for
life against decadence and neglect. We have
other vegetable medicines that have wrestled
through even a tougher strife to save themselves
from being burked and buried alive by
selfish, monopolists and sceptical physicians.
Let us take quinine, or Peruvian bark, to
illustrate the progress of Economic Botany.
Kina-kina, or the bark of barks, is the native
name which the Spaniards heard from the
mouth of the South American aborigines;
they wrote it china-china, while the French
altered it to quinquina. In any case, the
etymology of quinine is far easier to trace than
the history of the substance itself. As authors
relate that the Arab goats revealed to man
the virtues of coffee by their fantastic bounds
and gestures after browsing on the poetic
berry, so, it would appear, we are indebted
for a knowledge of the medicinal powers of
Peruvian bark to the cure of sick animals
who had drunk the water of a pond in which
the trunks of kina-kina trees lay macerating.
Other authorities, with manly pride, preferring
to attribute so important a discovery to
human agency, refer it to a feverish Indian,
who was relieved in consequence of quenching
his thirst by draughts of water similarly
saturated with the principles of quinine.
Another Indian, anonymous like the first,
and in possession of the same secret, appears
to have communicated it to a noble Spaniard,
the Corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez de
Cannizares, whom he thus cured of an
intermittent fever. The Corregidor in turn
gallantly employed the remedy at Lima, in
sixteen hundred and thirty-eight, in rescuing
from fever the Countess del Cinchon, the wife
of the viceroy. The lady, on her return to
Spain, loudly puffed the marvellous specific,
which was called, after her, Pulvis Comitissae,
or the countess's powder; and her Latinised
name, Cinchona, was consecrated to botanical
nomenclature. During her stay in America,
the grateful patient gratuitously distributed,
to all who were suffering from fever in the
viceroyalty of Lima, the remedy which had
re-established her own health. So far, all
went smoothly with Peruvian bark.

But, at her departure, she placed in the
hands of the Jesuits who resided in the
Spanish possessions, a certain provision of
the medicament, in order that they might
bring it into general use; from which
circumstance it acquired the name of Jesuits'