80 Swayne on the Manufacture 



When the season has been for the most part dry, and parti- 

 cularly the latter part of it, those poppy-heads that have been 

 housed without having been much washed with rain after the 

 last scarifying, will be found to contain more of the narcotic 

 substance, and consequently more valuable to druggists and 

 apothecaries for the purposes of making extract, poppy-sirop, 

 §-c., than others which have stood to perfect their seeds without 

 ever having been wounded. This may seem a paradox to them 

 and most other people, that the capsules M'hich have been repeat- 

 edly robbed of their narcotic substance, during their growth, 

 should yet at the end of it contain more than others from which 

 none had been taken ; but I am convinced that it is a fact, and 

 it may be accounted for in the following manner. The succus 

 proprius, or milky juice of the poppy, in which alone (as I be- 

 fore observed,) the narcotic principle resides, continues to ooze 

 out of the incisions in small quantities after the operator has 

 left them, and is, by the action of the sun's heat, converted into 

 hard opium externally on the surface of the capsules, as will be 

 apparent to the eye, but more so internally in the scars and 

 lacerated cells, which juice, not being in its originally fluid 

 state, the seeds have no power of absorbing. Whereas, in the 

 poppy-heads, which have stood to ripen without ever having 

 been wounded, the seeds continue to consume this juice, (for 

 whose use it was, no doubt primarily intended,) as long as any 

 juice is secreted in the cells for their consumption. This circum- 

 stance may surely be considered as an additional encourage- 

 ment to the preparation of opium in this country, where many 

 persons find their account in growing poppy-heads, without 

 making any profit of their most valuable contents. 



What the profit may amount to from these two sources 

 which I have particularized, I shall not pretend to calculate ; 

 for I should be quite contented (as I think any reasonable 

 person would be,) with the realized balance, as deduced in 

 the Edinburgh Journal, from the other products of the poppy ; 

 and, therefore, will readily allow the whole amount which may 

 be estimated to arise from both these, to be thrown into the 

 scale with the rest, — to make good weight. 



