CH. VIIl] TOBACCO, OPIUM, HEMP 101 



medicinal purposes comes to this day from Asia Minor, but in 

 India there are perhaps about 1,000,000 acres under opium, 

 half of that area being in Bengal, the other Indian districts 

 growing it mainly for local use. The annual export from 

 Bengal is about 7,500,000 Ibs. 



Seed is distributed by the Government Opium Department; 

 the plant comes into flower about three months after sowing, 

 and the petals are removed when fully matured, and kept to 

 form the packing round the opium. The seed-capsule is ready 

 for treatment in about another ten days, and is lanced with a 

 series of parallel knives about 1/30 of an inch apart. The opium 

 which runs out the milk of the plant is collected next day 

 with a kind of scoop, and sold to the Government, in whose 

 opium factories it is then made up into cakes of about 21 Ibs., 

 wrapped in a thick coating of the petals of the flowers. 



Hemp. It is best to consider this plant along with opium, 

 for in the tropics it only yields the drug, whereas in temperate 

 climates it gives a very excellent fibre, but no drug. The plant 

 (Cannabis sativa) is a native of the northern tropics and the 

 subtropics of Asia, and is largely cultivated in India for the 

 drug, and in southern Europe, China, etc. for the fibre. It is 

 especially cultivated in Bengal, and the area devoted to it is 

 very large. 



In Bengal nurseries are prepared in May, the plants are 

 sown in August, and planted out in September, six or eight 

 inches apart. They mature from January onwards. The male 

 flowers are removed in November, for, if the female flowers are 

 fertilised, there is no formation of the drug. 



The drug is a resinous exudation found upon almost all 

 parts of the plant, and is marketed in three forms, ganja, 

 charas, and bhang, the resins of the flowers, the young shoots, 

 and the mature leaves respectively. Ganja is prepared from 

 the flowering shoots (female) by packing them together and 

 tramping them down. Charas is prepared in climates further 

 north than ganja, and the flowering twigs are beaten over a 

 cloth, when the resin drops off as a fine powder. Bhang con- 

 sists of the actual mature leaves, mainly gathered from the wild 



