PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM. 



67 



gether, and kept apart only by tlie thickness of the binding string (Azamgarb). The 

 capsule is held in one hand while the comb is drawn down it from its head to the stalk, 

 making four deep scratches. This is always done in the evening, and next morning a 

 gummy juice is found to have exuded from the cuts, which is carefully scraped off with 

 a little iron scoop, a shell, or a bit of bamboo, and placed in an earthenware vessel. This 

 is the crude opium. Each capsule is lanced from three to eight times at intervals of 

 two or three days, and at the end of the season is in this way decorated with parallel 

 scores round its whole circumference. Only a certain portion of the crop is lanced 

 each afternoon, so that the whole field takes two or three days to pass under the opera- 

 tion, at the end of which a fresh start is made from the first lanced plot ; in this way 

 continuous work is afforded to the cultivator and his family. When the juice has all 

 been extracted the capsules are cut oS, the seed which they contain selling for oil manufac- 

 ture at a rather less price than rape commands at the time. The empty capsules are 

 purchased by native druggists {pansdris), since they are an exceedingly efficacious mate- 

 rial for poultices and fomentations. 



Diseases and injuries. Caterpillars occasionally do some damage, and it is with a view to attracting them 



elsewhere that such crops as lettuce are sometimes mixed with the poppy. An east wind 

 during lancing time is exceedingly harmful, since the juice will not then exude properly, 

 and this is the origin of the complaints most frequently heard from opium growers. 



Cost of cultivation. The cost of Cultivating an acre of poppy is given below : — 







ES. 



AS, 



p. 



Ploughing (eight times), 





... 6 











Clod crushing, 





... 



4 







Seed, 





... 



2 







Sowing, 





... 



3 







Making water beds, ... 





... 



3 







"Watering (six times), ... 





... 9 



8 







Weeding (four times),... 





... 3 











Harvesting (8 coolies at 2 annas a day for 15 days), 



• • • 



... 15 











*Manure (200 maunds ; frds of cost), 





... 4 















38 



4 







*Kent (frds of annual), 



• •• 



... 10 













Total, 



... 48 



4 







Average outturn per acre. The records of the Ghazipur Opium factory indicate that the receipts of standard 



opium from cultivators in the Azamgarh District averaged on 16 years, 9 seers per acre. 

 That a certain amount of opium is, however, illegally retained by the cultivators, 

 appears to follow from the startling difference in the consumption of Government opium 

 in Districts where the poppy is and is not cultivated. During the year 1879-80, for 

 instance, the sales of Government opium in the Moradabad District amounted to 2,369 

 seers, whereas in the adjoining District of Budaun they amounted to only 387 seers. 

 The key to the difference is found in the fact that the area under opium in Budaun 

 was 7,944 acres, while in Moradabad it was only 19. Taking consumption as propor- 

 tional to population, Budaun to be on a par with Moradabad should have taken 1,858 



* Only §rd9 of the cost of manure and of the annual rent are charged, since at least ^rd of each must be debited to 

 the crop of maize which nearly always precedes opium in the kharif. 



K 2 



