1'oppy. 239 



11 Opium should be of a rich brown colour, a tough con- 

 sistency, and a tolerably smooth and uniform texture. Its pe- 

 culiar narcotic smell should be strong and fresh, and unaccom- 

 panied by any burnt odour. Its taste is nauseously bitter, and 

 slightly warm and acrid. Those pieces which are very soft, 

 full of herbaceous impurities, containing patches of a very dark 

 brown or black extract, and of an empyreumatic odour, are in 

 general adulterated; and it is not uncommon to find bullets 

 concealed in masses even of the best opium. When good 

 opium is carefully dried, it becomes brittle, and affords a 

 yellow-brown powder. It burns with flame, and exhales an 

 odour in which may be traced some resemblance to that of 

 animal matter."* 



Indigenous Opium. — The White Poppy has been cultivated with 

 great success in England, for the purpose of obtaining opium. Messrs. 

 Cowley and Staines in 1823, collected 196 lbs. of opium, which sold for 

 30*. 6d. per lb., from little more than twelve acres of land. Mr. Young 

 has received the Gold Isis medal from the Society for the Encouragement 

 of Arts, (see Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. i. p. 258,) for his im- 

 proved method of cultivating opium in Britain. The following is that 

 gentleman's mode of procedure ; — 



" In 1818, I selected a piece of ground in the highest state of culti- 

 vation, well manured with horse-dung, in which I planted early pota- 

 toes, in rows four feet wide. Furrows were first drawn ; in these 

 furrows the dung was laid ; then the sets were dropped on the dung 

 about nine inches asunder, and covered with the hoe. The potatoes 

 were planted in the middle of April ; and at the same time the poppy seeds 

 were sown on the middle space between the potato rows, two rows of. 

 poppies on each space, and twelve inches between the rows. When the 

 poppy-plants were about two inches high, they were at first thinned out by 

 the hoe, and afterwards by the fingers, to the distance of eight inches be- 

 tween the plants. Although the potatoes will be ready for immediate use 

 before the gathering of opium commences, the whole crop will not be 

 entirely ripe for lifting till after the opium is collected. 



" The distance between the poppy-plants being wide, they produced four 

 full grown capsules each, and some of them seven or eight capsules. As 

 my poppies were sown about the middle of April, they were ready for 

 bleeding about the middle of . July. For making the incisions, I use a 

 double-bladed, convex-edged knife, having all the blade covered with sealing- 

 wax, except so much of the cutting-edge as is sufficient for wounding the 

 external rind of the capsule, without penetrating its cavity, and with which 



* Brande's Manual of Pharmacy, ed. 3, p. 155. 



