336 ON THE CULTIVATION OF INDIGENOUS OPIUM. 
This loss, necessarily impoverishes the gathering of the next day, 
which gives but a small amount of morphia, the opiate juice not 
having had time to concentrate itself in the capsule and to acquire from 
it the necessary amount of morphia, for it is principally in this part of 
the vegetable that the alkaloid is formed, and the milky juice which 
constantly arrives there, contains little alkaloid if it is not allowed to 
remain in the capsule a certain time. 
To prove this, I refer to the experiments made by M. Aubergier, 
and repeated several times by myself. 
In effect, whilst the Professor de Clermont, in July 1844, gathered 
by incisions of a mixture of somniferous poppies with long and round 
heads, an opium containing 8 '57 per cent, of morphia and 9*48 of 
water, he only obtained by squeezing in his hands the poppy heads, not 
detached from the stalk (the crown of the stigma only being raised), he 
obtained I say, a product, only giving 1*52 per cent, of morphia and 
7-67 of water. 
It must be admitted that in this case the juices of the plant are 
niixed with opium. 
8. The Drying of Opiums for Sale. 
"When the collection of the opiate juice has terminated it is to be 
placed in vases, such as a deep plate that may be covered with a leaf to 
keep the substance from water and from dust. It is then exposed to 
the sun, taking care to turn it occasionally to hasten the dessicating pro- 
cess ; for according to MM. Decharme and Benard, opium when slowly 
dried undergoes a change injurious to the morphia, which then suffers 
a sort of fermentation or oxygenation which transforms by degrees the 
alkaloid into a less valuable product. 
The opiate juice, which was of a milky white, becomes of a blackish 
brown in solidifying. As soon as it is dry, it is made into balls of a 
hundred grains weight, and then rolled up in a sheet of oiled paper ; 
they are then fit to be taken to the apothecary, who purchases them ac- 
cording to their richness in morphia, so that the price may vary from 
sixty to one hundred and twenty francs the kilogramme. 
Before ending the subject of the extraction of opium, it may be 
useful to tell the planters, that the opiate juice applied to the sting of 
bees, causes the pain to cease immediately ; and we know that in prac- 
tising the incisions on poppy heads, we are not free from the attacks of 
these insects. 
9. Collecting of the Seed. 
The culture of carnation poppy being made on so large a scale in 
the department of Somme where more than twelve thousand hectares 
are given up to this oil plant, with a view to the extraction of the 
white oil, called carnation, I think I ought to reproduce here the 
valuable experiments given by MM. Benard and Collis, on the method 
of collecting the seed in the north of France. 
