of British Opium. 71 



expeditiously by two persons, having each a Dutch hoe or 

 scuffle ; and a stick for a measure, three f«et long ; with two 

 lines fixed on frame- work, twenty inches asunder. This double 

 line is to be strained across three or four ridges at once. The 

 workmen are then to meet midway between the double line, and 

 hoe backwards, which will bring them to the ends of the line at 

 the same time, where they will be ready together to move the 

 line forwards, by laying each his measuring rod on the ground ; 

 and thus they are to proceed till the whole is finished. In this 

 way two men can set out good part of an acre in a day. The 

 plants are afterwards to be repeatedly thinned, and kept clean 

 from weeds by the hoe ; or, if necessary, by hand, till, at the 

 last hoeing, they are to be left a foot apart, or nearly so. In 

 doing this, care should be taken to leave plants standing as near 

 the limits of the beds as possible. Each plant having thus a 

 square superficial foot of soil to grow in, their stalks will be- 

 come so strong, and they will take so firm root in the ground, 

 that scarcely any wind will have power to blow them down. 



I omitted to observe in my former paper on this subject, 

 (which I should have done), that the capsules are to be scari- 

 fied, and the juice collected whenever, and as long as they will 

 yield anyjuice : and the incisions to be made in any part of the 

 capsule where there is a vacancy, always horizontally. For if they 

 were to be made in a vertical direction, or any other approach- 

 ing to that, the attraction of gravitation, together with that of 

 cohesion, would immediately bring all the fluid to the bottom of 

 the incisions, from whence it would as instantaneously fall in 

 single and successive drops on the leaves or the ground, and 

 be lost ; whereas, in the horizontal incisions, the juice oozes 

 out in every part of them gradually and equally, remaining col- 

 lected in globules by the force of cohesion, till the whole of 

 what the capsule will then part with, or at least till sufficient 

 has exuded to make it worth the labour to take it off at once. 



I should likewise have directed the collector to repeat the 

 operation with the quill, as often as he observes the juice 

 likely to drop from the capsules after having scraped them, 

 and particularly if the weather is incUned, to rain. But if the 



