294 FLORA DOMESTICA. 



watering is stopped, and the opium is begun to be col- 

 lected by making at sunset two cuts on the surface of 

 the capsules from below upwards, without penetrating 

 into the cavity, with an instrument that has two points 

 as fine as those of lancets; this is repeated for three 

 or four evenings, when the capsules are then allowed to 

 ripen their seeds. The juice that exudes is collected in 

 the morning, and dried in the sun. An inferior kind of 

 opium is made from the Poppy in the East Indies, and the 

 monopoly of buying it up from the cultivators constitutes 

 the third source of the territorial revenue of the English 

 East India Company, to whom this monopoly produces a 

 million sterling. 



Several attempts have been made to collect opium from 

 Poppies grown in England or Scotland. Mr. Young 

 sowed his Poppies for this purpose in April, and found 

 them ready for bleeding in July. The cuts are made by 

 two knives tied together, with guards on their blades that 

 they may not cut deeper than about the sixteenth part of 

 an inch. The juice that exudes is immediately wiped 

 off with a small painter's brush, called by them a sash-tool, 

 rounded a little at the point. When this brush is suf- 

 ficiently charged, the juice is scraped off by rubbing it on 

 a slip of tin fixed in the mouth of a tin flask. The opium 

 thus collected is then slowly dried without heat, and formed 

 into balls. Mr. Young found that an acre of Poppies thus 

 treated, at five successive bleedings to each head, would 

 yield 56 lb. of opium ; and that the Poppy-seeds, on being 

 pressed, yielded 375 pints of salad oil*. 



The solution of opium in spirit of wine is now called 

 laudanum, or loddy, so much used instead of tea by the 

 poorer class of females in Manchester and other manufac- 



* Transactions of the Society of Arts, vol. xxxvii. 



