136 
NAT. ORDER. PAPAVERACEiE. 
If the wound was made in the heat of the day, a cicatrix would 
be too soon formed. The night-dews, by theii' moisture, favor the 
exstillation of the juice. 
Early in the morning, old women, boys, and girls, collect the 
juice, by scraping it off the wounds with a small iron scoop, and 
deposit the whole in an earthen pot, where it is worked by 
the hand, in the open sunshine, until it becomes of a considerable 
mass. It is then formed into cakes of a globular shape, and about 
four pounds in weight, and laid into little earthen basins, to be 
farther exsiccated. These cakes are covered over with the 
Poppy or tobacco leaves, and dried, until they are fit for sale. 
Opium is frequently adulterated with cow-dung, the extract of 
the Poppy-plant, j^rocured by boiling, and various other substances, 
which they keep in secrecy." Opium is here a considerable branch 
of commerce. There is from 600,000 to 800,000 pounds of it an- 
nually exported from the Ganges. 
It appears to us highly probable, that the White Poppy might 
be cultivated for the purpose of obtaining opium to great advan- 
tage in this country. Alston says, " The milky juice, drawn by 
incision from the Poppy heads, and thickened either in the sun or 
shade, even in this country, has all the characters of good opium; 
its color, consistence, taste, smell, faculties, phenomena, are all the 
same ; only, if carefully collected, it is more pure, and more free 
of feculencies." 
Similar remarks have also been made by others, to which we 
may add those of our own ; for during the last summer we at dif- 
ferent times made incisions in the green capsules of the White 
Poppy (growing in our garden), from which we collected the 
juice, which soon acquired a due consistence, and was found, both 
by its sensible qualities and effects, to be of the first quality of 
opium. 
Opium, called Opium Thebaicum, from being anciently pre- 
pared chiefly at Thebes, has been a celebrated medicine from the 
