KEW GAKBEN MUSEUM. 17 



throws upon a plate a small portion as a specimen, and estimates its 

 consistence. This estimate is written down on a ticket by the Euro- 

 pean officer, and it is sent with the specimen to the laboratory, where 

 a fixed weight of drug is accurately weighed, evaporated to dryness in 

 a plate placed on a metallic table heated by steam, and the weight of 

 the residue carefully determined. It rarely happens that the guess of 

 the purkhea (native Opium examiner) differs fi^om the actual assay by 

 more than one or two grains, and it serves to check the actual assay 

 in cases of evident mistake or accident, which occasionally must occur 

 when a multitude of delicate operations are rapidly carried on. The 

 number of specimens which leave the examiner's table daily, amounts 

 to little short of two thousand. 



" The tacttiB eruditus possessed by the purkhea is very remarkable : he 

 rarely fails to detect even small quantities of the grosser and more tan- 

 gible impurities, whilst he is no less delicately alive to the slightest va- 

 riations in colour and smell. In the event of a specimen appearing to 

 be adulterated, it is at once set aside, to be carefully examined by the 

 opium examiner, who makes a special report respecting it for the in- 

 formation of the agent, who, should he see sufficient grounds for doing 

 so, confiscates it, when the whole of the drug is destroyed, and the cul- 

 tivator gets nothing for it. Should the adulterations be less extensive, 

 and the drug such as to be not altogether useless, it is taken at half 

 price, or is subjected to such smaller penalty as the examining officer 

 may think fit to inflict ; and it is employed in making the lewah^ or 

 paste, used in forming the shells of the opium-cakes. The great pro- 

 bability of detection, and the risk of confiscation, act as very efficient 

 checks to the prevalence of adulteration, and the quantity of opium 

 confiscated yearly is comparatively small. The nature of the adultera- 

 tions practised by the cultivators is very various. 



*' The grosser impurities usually mixed with the drug to increase its 

 weight are mud, sand, powdered charcoal, soot, cow-dung, pounded 

 poppy petals, and pounded seeds of various descriptions, All of these 

 substances are readily discoverable in breaking up the drug in cold 

 water, removing the soluble and lighter portions of the diffused mass 

 by decantation, and carefully examining the sediment. By this means 

 impurities of the above nature usually become physically appareut. 

 Flour is a very favourite article of adulteration, but is readily detected ; 

 opium so adulterated speedily becomes sour; it breaks with a peculiar 



VOL. VI. 



I) 



