116 HEMP. 



TTG couple them together here in one and the same little 

 treatise. Flax is soft and tender in its nature. As it 

 grows, it bends submissively before the beholder, and 

 delights the eye by the smoothness of its aspect and the 

 delicate brightness of its colouring. It supplies us with 

 necessaries, with luxuries, and with emollient medicines. 

 Hemp has something martial in its appearance. It rises 

 stiffly from the seed-bed, like a crop of lances, pointing 

 upright in defiance to the sky, and often overtopping 

 the stature of those to whose labours it owes its birth. 

 Hostility and repulsiveness are the leading elements of 

 its composition. It chokes every herb that grows beneath 

 its shade. It is a robust plant, destined for robust pur- 

 poses, becoming almost a weapon in the hands of man. 

 It furnishes him with military and naval stores; with 

 tents to live in, while making war on his enemies or his 

 victims ; with cordage and sails, enabling him to traverse 

 the globe as a friend or a foe ; with ropes and nets to 

 entrap or hold the sanguinary tiger or the rapacious shark. 

 The elephant, decoyed and bound in hempen bands, 

 forthwith becomes an obedient slave. For clothing 

 merely, as a means of warmth and covering, hemp must 

 be weakened in its proportions and constitutions, by the 

 restraint of specially crowded culture. It is cramped and 

 imprisoned, even while fed and kept alive, like a captive 

 savage of too ardent a temperament. "With greater liberty 

 allowed, it seems to take a perverse pleasure in arming 

 man with the means of mischief as well as with those of 

 useful toil. Hemp bears no flowers that please the eye : 

 its healthy hue is a dark and sombre green ; its stem is 

 rigid and roughly bristly; its sharp and penetrating 

 odour affects the head ; its leaves are exceedingly acrid to 

 the taste ; and instead of yielding a sedative potion or a 

 soothing liniment, it furnishes, in the shape of "bang," a 

 poisonous as well as an intoxicating agent. Flax, lastly, 

 heals the honourable wounds of the soldier; hemp dis- 

 gracefully finishes the career of the hopeless criminal. 



Hemp, Canncibis saliva, according to Linnsous, ckanvre 

 in French, and canape iu Italian, is an annual plant, 



