134 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



that so many highly skilled observers, favoured with 

 splendid opportunities, failed to meet with or observe 

 cases of excessive indulgence, proves how great must 

 be the evolution in relation to opium of the natives 

 of India. The following extracts are, for the con- 

 venience of reference, taken solely from the " First 

 Report " of the Commission, but the succeeding 

 reports fully confirm the evidence given in it : — 

 Sir George Birdwood said : 



" I wish here to speak only of my personal observation of the 

 habitual use of opium during my fifteen years' latter residence 

 in Western India. I paid the closest attention to the subject 

 during the whole of the years I was there, and had every kind 

 of experience in relation to it, having at different periods been 

 in charge of the Southern Mahratta Irregular Horse, the 8th 

 Madras Cavalry, the 3rd Native Infantry, the jail and civil 

 station of Sholapore, and the steam frigate Ajdaha. . . . Sub- 

 sequently, and for the remainder of my service, I was attached 

 to the Jansetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital, Bombay, and was in suc- 

 cession professor of anatomy and physiology and of botany and 

 materia medica, at Grant Medical College. I was also a J. P. 

 and a visitor of the jails of Bombay, and the year I was sheriff 

 I regularly visited them. Besides this, I was probably more 

 intimately familiar with all classes of the native population than 

 any other European of my generation, while, as an ever active 

 journalist (I was a journahst from the first day to the last of my 

 service in India), I was mixed up in almost every discussion of 

 this sort during my time in Bombay. Well, in all the experience 

 — as here precisely detailed, and capable, therefore, of being 

 checked at every point — I thus had of the indigenous life of 

 Western India, I never once met with a single native suffering, 

 or who had ever suffered, from what is called the excessive use, 

 or from the habitual use of opium; and, except cases of acci- 



