ON THE CULTIVATION OF OPIUxM IN ARMENIA. 
15 
little oblong in shape, the yellow and black produce small 
and perfectly round heads. The white seed are preferred 
by cultivators, being exceedingly oleaginous, and in demand 
for the manufacture of poppy oil. The yellow variety 
yields an abundance of the juice, and the black a heavy 
product. In some places the blue seeds are esteemed also. 
The white and blue seed are sown near the house for 
the greater convenience of the peasant in cultivation. 
Time of sowing. — Careful cultivators having assorted 
and selected the best seeds, sow them according to the fol- 
lowing directions. The white and blue are sown on the 
plains, in a dry soil, about the end of September or begin- 
ning of October. The cultivator, however, failing a 
suitable occasion in the autumn, for want of rain, watches 
a favorable opportunity from the end of January till March, 
when if one occur, he sows the white and blue seed, or if 
not, he abstains. 
The yellow and black seeds are sown in elevated and 
mountainous regions, and the most favorable time is about 
the beginning of April. 
Before sowing, the seed are thoroughly mixed with ten 
times their weight of finely powdered and sifted earth; they 
are then scattered over the soil. 
For a space of ground forty paces square, forty drachms 
of the seed suffice. 
It is important that at the time of sowing, the ground 
should be neither too dry nor too moist. The most suitable 
state of the soil is that which occurs after the rains have 
ceased to inundate the fields and melt the ice ; as the mois- 
ture then evaporates, the ground becoms soft and spongy. 
Care and treat?nent of the 'plants. — When the plants 
have grown to the size of lettuce, the planters hoe around 
them with care, and on the appearance of weeds repeat the 
operation. If they grow too closely together, they pluck 
the most feeble, so as to leave between them a space of 
about a foot, (deux empans.) In about twenty days after- 
