QUALITIES. _Form_, cakes, consisting of the stigmata of the flower,
closely pressed together. _Odour_, sweet, penetrating and diffusive.
_Taste_, warm and bitterish. _Colour_, a rich and deep orange red.
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION. One hundred parts consist of sixty-two of
extractive, the remaining parts are chiefly ligneous fibre, with small
portions of resin and essential oil. Bouillon Lagrange and Vogel have
examined this extractive matter very accurately, and from the
circumstance of its watery infusion assuming different colours when
treated with different agents, they have named it _polychroite_. Thus
chlorine and light destroy its colour, sulphuric acid changes it to
indigo, which gradually becomes lilac, and nitric acid gives it a green
hue. SOLUBILITY. It yields its colour and active ingredients to water,
alcohol, proof spirit, wine, vinegar, and in a less degree to æther; the
watery infusion, and the vinous tincture soon grow sour, and lose their
properties, and the solution in vinegar becomes quickly colourless. MED.
USES. It is now never employed but for the sake of its colour or
aromatic flavour, as an adjunct to other substances. It is much used in
foreign cookery to colour rice, &c. OFFICINAL PREP. _Syrup. Croci._ L.
_Tinct. Croci sativi._ E. _Confect. Aromat._ L.D. (=O=). _Pil. Aloes cum
Myrrha_. L. (=G=). _Tinct. Aloes comp._ L.E.D. (=O=) _Tinct. Cinchonæ
comp._ L.D. _Tinct. Rhei._ L. (=O=). _Tinct. Rhei comp._ L. (=O=).
ADULTERATIONS. It is not unfrequently sophisticated with the fibres of
smoked beef, or the petals of flowers, especially of the marigold,
(_Calendula Officinalis_,) and of the safflower, (_Carthamus
Tinctorius_.) The former of these fraudulent ingredients is indicated by
the unpleasant odour which arises when the saffron is thrown upon live
coals; the latter, by infusing the specimen in hot water, when the
expanded stigmata may be easily distinguished from the other petals of
substituted flowers; a deficiency of colour and odour in the infusion
indicates that a tincture or infusion has already been drawn from the
saffron, and that it has been subsequently pressed again into a cake. In
the market is to be found saffron from Sicily, France, and Spain,
besides the English; that which is imported from Spain, is generally
spoiled with oil, in which it is dipt with the intention of preserving
it. The cake saffron sold in some of the less respectable shops,
consists of one part of saffron and nine of marigold, made into a cake
with oil, and then pressed; it is sold in considerable quantities for
the use of birds, when in moult.