INDIGENOUS OPIUM. 237 
the years 1859, 1860 and 1861, and this statistical information now 
enables me to solve the important problem, as follows : — 
The quantity of opium imported each year for the consumption of 
France being ascertained, what are, at an average per commune, the sur- 
face of ground, and the amount of hand-labour necessary to be employed 
in the annual production of the same quantity of opium from the soil 
of our own beautiful country ? 
Many think that this object could never be attained on account of 
the slowness of the harvest process. They look upon this question as 
an immense work, and practically impossible in France, because not 
knowing the real figure to be reached, they exaggerate the quantity oi 
opium imported each year for our consumption, and consequently the 
quantity required to be produced from our territory in order that we 
may dispense with that of oriental nations. 
But the experiments that I made in 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1864, 
and the satisfactory results obtained from my course of public and gra- 
tuitous lectures on agriculture tell me on the contrary that nothing is 
more simple, or more easy than the solution of this practical question. 
To prove this, I shall confine myself to taking for example my own 
small cultivation of one year. It will suffice to show what can be done 
by a willing and persevering mind. 
The duties of my official capacity, and the lectures that I gave 
throughout the country, having absorbed almost all my time, I could 
only cultivate thirty square yards of ground. This was very little, and 
yet five times this quantity cultivated by the inhabitants would give a 
rej)ly to the grand problem of the home production of opium. 
I sowed in February, as I shall hereafter indicate, about six grammes 
of the seed of the carnation poppy. I occupied four hours at the sowing 
and digging of this, and two hours during five days in collecting eighty 
grammes of milky juice which gave me forty grammes of dry opium, 
containing 19*4 per cent, of morphine, and lastly one hour in gathering 
four litres ninety centilitres of seed. 
Such is the account of my small culture. And here is now an ex- 
tract from the quantities of opium imported for consumption into 
France : during the years 1859, 4,916 kilogr., 1860, 5,661 kilogr., 1861, 
6,653 kilogr. 
Let us take the last number, as it is the largest. The Post Office 
Directory of the year 1835 gives for the eighty-six departments of which 
France was then composed 37,153 communes. Admitting this to be so, 
if one workman for each commune operating only on thirty square yards 
of ground were to collect, as I have done in ten hours of work, forty 
grammes of dry opium, there could be collected in 37,153 communes 
1,486 kilogr. 120 grammes.* 
* A cultivator more accustomed than I am to bear the heat of the sim in 
July, could work more rapidly, aud produce consequently more opium iu the 
same time. 
