H. Martin Leake and B. Ram Pershad 3 



only per plant one of the most desirable features, since the maturation 

 of the crop will thus be confined within the narrowest limits of time. 

 Such a single capsuled habit is typical of most of the white flowered 

 races of the United Provinces. Chemical investigation has, further, 

 shown that some of these races yield opium containing as much as 18 ""j^ 

 morphine, and there is the possibility that these coloured races might 

 •afford material for breeding a high morphine content on to the habit 

 of the United Provinces races, thus producing a combination hitherto 

 nonexistent. The chemical work has, moreover, indicated a simple 

 and efficacious method by means of which opium of between 

 10 and 14 7o morphine content can be procured in any quantity 

 from the races as at present grown. While, therefore, there is con- 

 siderable scope for improvement by breeding within the United 

 Provinces races, there appears to be small prospect of the coloured 

 races affording any economic material in the solution of the immediate 

 problem. 



The object of the present paper, however, is not the development of 

 the economic aspect. The work on the coloured series, involving as it 

 does a record of over 150,000 plants in the season 1918 alone, has 

 yielded results which appear worthy of record. These are, however, of 

 a preliminary nature only, and would not have been published but that 

 the necessity for concentrating on the economic aspects renders it 

 doubtful if time will be found for further investigation. 



Literature. 



No complete examination of the Opium Poppy appears to have been 

 made from the breeder's aspect. From the agricultural aspect a certain 

 amount of work has been undertaken, but the plant is here considered 

 mainly as an oil producer, and its drug yielding capacity has been 

 ignored. 



A series of investigations are recorded by Hoffman^ between 1872 

 and 1884 in which reference is made to flower and seed characters of 

 the Opium Poppy among several other species of the Papaveraceae. 

 De Vries^ has similarly recorded observations on the Opium Poppy and 

 the results of certain crosses in which the same characters figure, while 

 Fruwirth has summed up the results of his own experiments^ in " Die 

 Zuchtung der landwirtschaftlichen Kulturpflanzen," where a full list of 



1 See especially Bot. Zeit. l. (1882), 499. 



2 Die Mutationstheorie. 



3 Naturw. Z. f. L. u. F. ii. 1904, 1. 



1—2 



