uable treatise on the
cultivation, preparation, and adulteration of Malwa opium. It was some
time before he obtained the permission of the East India Company to
publish the result of the experience he had acquired in Malwa, and as
Government inspector of opium at Bombay. It is the most practical
treatise I have yet met with, although a very elaborate, useful paper,
by Mr. Little, surgeon, of Singapore, appears in the 2nd vol. of the
"Journal of the Indian Archipelago," from which I have quoted the
preceding remarks.

Mr. Little furnishes a complete history of the drug, and the physical
and mental effects resulting from its habitual use. There are also
some able remarks in Dr. O'Shaughnessy's Bengal Dispensatory:--

For the successful cultivation of opium, a mild climate, plentiful
irrigation, a rich soil, and diligent husbandry, are indispensable.
In reference to the first of these, Malwa is placed most favorably.
The country is in general from 1,300 to 2,000 feet above the level
of the sea: the mean temperature is moderate, and range of the
thermometer small. Opium is always cultivated in ground near a tank
or running stream, so as to be insured at all times of an abundant
supply of water. The rich black loam, supposed to be produced by the
decomposition of trap, and known by the name of cotton soil, is that
prepared for opium. Though fertile and rich enough to produce thirty
successive crops of wheat without fallowing, it is not sufficiently
rich for the growth of the poppy until largely supplied with manure.
There is, in fact, no crop known to the agriculturist, unless sugar
cane, that requires so much care and labor as the poppy. The ground
is first four times ploughed on four successive days, then carefully
harrowed; when manure, at the rate of from eight to ten cart loads
an acre, is applied to it; this is scarcely half what is allowed a
turnip crop at home. The crop is after this watered once every eight
or ten days, the total number of waterings never exceeding nine in
all. One beegah takes two days to soak thoroughly in the cold
weather, and four as the hot season approaches. Water applied after
the petals drop from the flower, causes the whole to wither and
decay. When the plants are six inches high, they are weeded and
thinned, leaving about a foot and a-half betwixt each plant; in
three months they reach matu