OPIUM. 



587 



the late Mr. Flemming introduced the practice of using the petals of the poppy, 

 •\yhicb was such an improvement that the Court of Directors presented him 

 with 50,000 rupees. The balls, forty in number, are packed in a mango wood 

 case, which consists of two stories with twenty pigeon holes in each, lined with 

 lath and surrounded by the dried leaves of the poppy. Sometimes these balls 

 are so soft as to burst their skins, and much of the liquid opium running out, 

 is lost. In 1823, many of the chests of Patna lost five catties from this cause, 

 and to this day we have the same thing continuing to occur. Patna chests are 

 covered with bullock hides, Benares with gunnies. 



Dr. Impej, staff surgeon at Poona, who resided in Malwa from 

 1843 to 1846, published at Bombay, in 1848, a valuable treatise 

 on the cultivation, preparation, and adulteration of Malwa opium. 

 It was some time before he obtained the permission of the East 

 India Company to publish the result of the experience he had 

 acquired in Malwa, and as Government inspector of opium at 

 Bombay. It is the most practical treatise I have yet met with, 

 although a very elaborate, useful paper, by Mr. Little, surgeon, 

 of Singapore, appears in the 2nd vol. of the " Journal of the 

 Indian Archipelago," from which I have quoted the preceding 

 remarks. 



Mr. Little furnishes a complete history of the drug, and the 

 physical and mental effects resulting from its habitual use. There 

 are also some able remarks in Dr. O'Shaughnessy's Bengal Dis- 

 pensatory : — 



For the successful cultivation of opium, a mild climate, plentiful irrigation, 

 a rich soil, and diligent husbandry, are indispensable. In reference to the first 

 of these, Malwa is placed most favorably. The country is in general from 

 1,300 to 2,OC0 feet above the level of the sea : the mean temperature is mode- 

 rate, and range of the thermometer small. Opium is always cultivated in 

 ground near a tank or running stream, so as to be insured at all times of an 

 abundant supply of water. The rich black loam, supposed to be produced by 

 the decomposition of trap, and known by the name of cotton soil, is that pre- 

 pared for opium. Though fertile and rich enough to produce thirty successive 

 crops of wheat without fallowing, it is not sufficiently rich for the growth of 

 the poppy until largely supplied with manure. There is, in fact, no crop known 

 to the agriculturist, unless sugar cane, that requires so much care and labor as 

 the poppy. The ground is first four times ploughed on four successive days, 

 then carefully harrowed ; when manure, at the rate of fr jm eight to ten cart 

 loads an acre, is applied to it ; this is scarcely half what is allowed a turnip 

 crop at home. The crop is after this watered once every eight or ten days, the 

 total number of waterings never exceeding nine in all. One beegah takes two 

 days to soak thoroughly in the cold weather, and four as the hot season ap- 

 proaches. Water applied after the petals drop from the' flower, causes the 

 whole to wither and decay. "WTien the plants are six inches high, they are 

 weeded and thinned, leaving about a foot and a-half betwixt each plant ; in 

 three months they reach maturity, and are then about four feet in height if 

 well cultivated. The full-grown seed-pod measures three and a-half inches 

 vertically, and two and a-half in horizontal diameter. Early in February and 

 March the bleeding process commences. Three small lancet-shaped pieces of 

 iron are bound together with cotton, about one-twelfth of an inch of the blade 

 alone protruding, so that no discretion as to the depth of the wound to be in- 

 flicted shall be left to the operator ; and this is drawn sharply up from the top 

 of the stalk at the base, to the summit of the pod. The sets of people are so 

 arranged that each plant is bled all over once every three or four days, 

 the bleedings being three or four times repeated on each plant. This operation 

 always begins to be performed about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, 

 the hottest part of the day. The juice appears almost immediately on the 



