* 
PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM. ORD. XXI. Rhoades. 379 
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But the cultivator strews all over the areas a nutrient compost 
of ashes, human excrements, cow dung, and a large portion of 
nitrous earth, scraped from the highways and old mud walls. 
When the plants are nigh flowering, they are watered profusely 
to increase the juice. 
“ When the capsules are half grown, no more water és given, 
and they begin to collect the opium. 
*« At sun-set they make two longitudinal double incisions * upon 
each half-ripe capsule, passing from below upwards, and taking 
care not to penetrate the internal cavity of the capsule. The 
incisions are repeated every evening until each capsule has re- 
ceived six or eight wounds; they are then allowed to ripen their 
seeds. The ripe capsules afford little or no juice. If the wound 
was made in the heat of the day, a cicatrix would be too soon 
formed. The night-dews by their moisture favour the exstil- 
Jation of the juice. 
« Early in the morning, old women, boys, and girls, collect the 
juice by scraping it off the wounds with a small iron scoop, and 
deposit the whole in an earthen pot, where it is worked by the 
hand in the open sunshine, until it becomes of a considerable 
spissitude. It is then formed into cakes of a globular shape, and 
about four pounds in weight, and laid into little earthen basins 
' to be further exsiccated. These cakes are covered over with 
the Poppy or tobacco leaves, and dried until they are fit for 
sale. Opium is frequently adulterated with cow-dung, the ex- 
tract of the Poppy piant procured by boiling, and various other 
substances, which they keep in secresy.” * Opium is here 
a considerable branch of commerce. There are about 600,000 
pounds of it annually exported from the Ganges.”’* 
It appears to us highly probable, that the White Poppy might 
be cultivated for the purpose of obtaining opium to great advan- 
= Kaempfer says, ot in Persia, a ye, pointed knife is used for making the in- 
cisions, Aman. Exot. Obs. 15. 
© See Medical Observations and tai vol. 5. p. 317 
