NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE POPPY. 357 



very beneficial. Cultivators should be strictly guarded against stowing 

 away their opium in Kotlas, or grain receptacles attached to their houses, 

 as these places from their peculiar construction are almost perfectly 

 destitute of ventilation. 



The following hints will be found useful for the manufacture of what 

 is departmentally termed " flower leaves" used as a cover for the opium cakes. 

 The flowers are to be gently broken off from the plant and gathered into, 

 baskets ; thirty or forty of them may be taken each time, and baked on a 

 shallow iron-pan or other earthern vessel over a moderate fire, and the mass, 

 when heated, should be gradually rubbed down with a piece of rolled-up 

 cloth, so that it may be pressed down to a circular form of the shape of a 

 Chupqtty, from six to twelve inches in diameter, clean in colour, with all 

 the rugged patches smoothed down to an even texture. Care must be 

 taken that the leaves are not burnt in the process of baking ; after being 

 baked they should be dried out in the sun, generally on the tops of houses 

 or on charpoys. Flowers broken off by the wind and strewn on the ground 

 should not be mixed up with those gathered by the hand, as the former 

 become black when prepared for use, so also flowers collected during a 

 shower of rain invariably become discoloured. One great precaution is 

 necessary to be remembered, which ignorant cultivators are apt to forget 

 that flowers which have not attained to their full bloom should, on no 

 account, be plucked, as this process would diminish in a -marked degree 

 the produce of the plant. Spoilt and discoloured leaves are never un- 

 serviceable, for they form excellent manure, and the cultivators, in using 

 them as such, virtually restore back to the soil much of the nutritive 

 principles which it had expended in the production of the plant. 



I think I have touched, though very cursorily, upon some of the salient 

 points relating to the cultivation of poppy. The culture of this plant is 

 more of a " horticultural " than an " agricultural " undertaking ; every kind 

 of land could not possibly be grown with poppy, plots of ground here and 

 there in the immediate vicinity of villages, accessible for irrigating 

 purposes and possessing facilities for constant watchfulness are generally 

 chosen. The amount of labour and agricultural skill devoted on the crops 

 from the early tillage of the fields to the gathering in of the produce- can. 

 only best be explained by the remunerative profits realised by the growers. 

 If sufficient care has been expended in the preparation of the land, and 

 persevering industry exercised in the subsequent treatment of the crops, 

 the harvest to the cultivator cannot but be rich and pleasing, a beegah of 

 land giving him, in a good season, from 8 to 10 seers of opium, the same 

 quantity almost, or perhaps 2 seers less, of flower leaves, and about 

 2 to %\ maunds of poppy seed, for which latter he finds a paying market 

 in his own native bazaar near his village. 



