338 ON THE CULTIVATION OF INDIGENOUS OPIUM. 
Orientals, we are told by Thevenot, covered their bread with it. The 
ladies of Genes eat it covered over with sugar. The Tuscans, with this 
seed and wheaten paste made hard cakes called paverata. The inhabi- 
tants of Hungary and Poland, of Germany, of Alsace, and of Picardy, 
feed upon it habitually. 
The oil and seed then of the carnation poppy may, with perfect safety 
be applied to alimentary purposes. 
France produces annually poppy seed in value from twenty-five to 
three millions of francs. The department of Somme alone, according 
to M. Benard, furnished in 1857, 140 thousand hectolitres of seed, valued 
at 4,480,000 francs. 
Why then not combine in these plantations, the gathering of opium 
with that of seed ? The value of the harvest might then be doubled. 
The agriculturist, I know, fears to compromise by this extraction of 
opium, the seed harvest. To satisfy him, I say with Messrs. Hardy, 
Benard, and Oollas, that incised capsules, give seed, which, when sown, 
produces in its turn, poppies furnishing opium as rich, and a seed as 
abundant, and giving as much oil, as poppies that had not been incised. 
But, for this, it is necessary that the incising instrument, be the 
same as mine, that it may not penetrate the wall of the capsule, for 
then, as M. Hardy has proved, a portion of the opiate juice will over- 
flow the interior, injure the seed, and prevent its coming to maturity. 
It was also M. Hardy who first proved that the incisions which do 
not go through the endocarp of the poppy head do not prevent the 
seed from ripening. 
Test of Opiums. 
It is to the percentage of morphia an opium contains that 
it owes its value in commerce. The greater the quantity of mor- 
phia the higher the value of the opium rises, and consequently the 
higher the price of the kilogramme. To know then the value of an 
opium the morphia must be estimated, and the process which seems to 
me the best for determining the richness of an opium is that of Guiller- 
mond. Fifteen grammes of opium are to be examined. Let it be 
pounded in a mortar with sixty grammes of alcohol, at .71° and thrown 
on a cloth and squeezed ; the cake is then taken with forty grammes of 
fresh alcohol, the tinctures are reunited in a bottle with four grammes 
of ammonia, twelve hours afterwards the result is obtained. The mor- 
phia is eliminated at the same time with a quantity greater or less of 
narcotine ; the former hanging on the sides of the bottle in crystals, 
coloured, and of a tolerable size, the latter in spiral crystals, very light. 
The crystals are to be placed together on a cloth, and well washed in 
several waters, to get rid of the meconate of ammonia which soils them, 
these crystals are to be plunged in a little flask of water.' The 
narcotine remains suspended in this vehicle, and by decanting, it will be 
separated from the morphia, which remaining at the bottom, can be 
collected, dried, and weighed. 
