246 ON INDIGENOUS OPIUM. 
under conditions really industrial and commercial, thanks to the many 
discoveries which have been made either in the manner of proceeding or 
in the apparatus for making incisions in the poppy heads. 
This harvest, the possibility and the importance of which has been 
completely proved cannot spread too rapidly over every territory of the 
empire ; it will free us from the enormous tribute which we each year 
pay to the Levant. Let the pharmaceutist, whose zeal in general, and 
energy in every good cause are well known, encourage in each of their 
localities this oriental culture, and very soon by degrees and imitation, 
and the force of example, it will spread over all France. 
Let each agriculturist devote a corner of his soul to this new tillage, 
which will be to him a lucrative and agreeable amusement. 
This culture is still more profitable in that it can be carried on by 
children of from twelve to fifteen years of age, who are but of secondary 
use in rough agricultural work. 
The agriculturist, without neglecting his ordinary employment, can 
have the gratification of seeing his young children occupy themselves 
in a foreign cultivation, lucrative and easy. And more, this culture will 
augment agricultural wealth in furnishing a produce which, from its 
purity and high name, will be appreciated by, and certainly preferred in, 
all the markets of the world to those exotic mixtures of a composition 
so variable. 
Finally, it can be given a fixed strength, 10 per cent, of morphine, 
thus securing a medicinal opium, rare and notable, par excellence, in fol- 
lowing the method already pointed out by M. Adrien. 
After some time, the number of productors becoming greater, the ex- 
cess of French consumption may become an object of important export, 
at the same time procuring for the agriculturist solid advantages. 
It will even be possible, as Professor Eoux de Rochefort says, to ex- 
change upon favourable terms our indigenous opium for other produc- 
tions, which we draw at a high price from the extremity of the East, such 
as tea, rhubarb, &c, &c. The passage by Suez enabling us more easily 
to forward it to the Celestial Empire, where, unhappily, the sad habit in 
China of smoking and masticating this substance is so widely spread. 
(To be continued.) 
