much of the liquid opium running out, is lost.  In 1823, many of the chests of Patna lost five catties from this cause, and to this day we have the same thing continuing to occur.  Patna chests are covered with bullock hides, Benares with gunnies.

Dr. Impey, staff surgeon at Poona, who resided in Malwa from 1843 to 1846, published at Bombay, in 1848, a valuable 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 maturity, and are then about four feet in height if well cultivated.  The full-grown seed-pod measures three and a-half inches vertically, and two and a-half in horizontal diameter.  Early in February and March the bleeding process commences.  Three small lancet-shaped