168 



assistance. In each of those towns, his was the cheerful 

 board of almost open-housed hospitality, without extrava- 

 gance or pride ; deeming ever the first unjust, the latter un- 

 manly. Generosity, wit and science, were his household 

 gods."* She again states that when he removed from Lich- 



* It was at this period of his residence at Lichfield, that the present 

 writer heard him strongly enforce the cultivation of papaver sommferum. 

 What he may have also enforced to others, may possibly have given rise to 

 some of those ingenious papers on its cultivation, which are inserted not 

 only in the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, 

 Manufactures and Commerce ; in other publications, but in the first and 

 fifth volumes of the Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. 

 The papers of Mr. Ball and Mr. Jones, on its cultivation, in the former of 

 these transactions, are particularly diffuse and valuable. They are fully 

 noticed in Dr. Thornton's " Family Herbal." The subjoined plate is a 

 copy of that in the title page to " Opiologia, ou traicte concernant le natu- 

 rel proprietes, vraye preparation, et seur vsage de 1'opium," a favourite vo- 

 lume with Dr. Darwin, printed at la Haye, 1614, 12mo. Dr. Darwin, in 

 his Botanical Garden, thus speaks of opium : " the finest opium is pro- 

 cured by wounding the heads of large poppies with a three-edged knife, 

 and tying muscle-shells to them, to catch the drops. In small quantities 

 it exhilirates the mind, raises the passions, and invigorates the body ; in 

 large ones, it is succeeded by intoxication, languor, stupor, and death." 



