106 FLOR\ HISTORICA. 



we quote Drayton as an additional caution to 

 those we have already given : 



Here Henbane, Poppy, Hemlock here, 

 Procuring deadly sleeping : 

 Which I do minister with fear ; 

 Not fit for each man's keeping. 



Tlie quantity of opium consumed in this country 

 annually is about fifty thousand pounds, and it is 

 now made in this country quite equal in all its 

 deadening and dangerous qualities to the best which 

 can be procured from Turkey. 



Messrs. Cowley and Staines, of Winslow, Bucks, 

 procured, in the year 1821, sixty pounds of solid 

 opium from rather less than four acres and a half 

 of land. The seed was sown in February, and the 

 gathering commenced in the latter end of July, 

 when the Poppies had lost their petals, and were 

 covered with a bluish- white bloom. 



0])ium having found its way into China, is be- 

 come almost a necessary of life with the Chinese, 

 yet its importation is strictly confined to Canton. 

 We most earnestly hope that its use will never get 

 out of the hands of the medical practitioners in this 

 country ; for where it does not kill, it enervates the 

 constitution, and deadens all lively energies by its 

 malignant influence, until it changes the character 

 of a whole country. 



In the time of Gesner, the village Damons and 



