Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/854

Rh 790 OPIUM prepared for the poppy-culture. Under less favourable circum stances the land is prepared from July till October by ploughing, weeding, and manuring. The seed is sown between the 1st and loth of November, and germinates in ten or fifteen days. The fields are divided for purposes of irrigation into beds about 10 feet square, which usually are irrigated twice between November and February, but if the season be cold, with hardly any rain, the operation is repeated five or six times. When the seedlings are 2 or 3 inches high they are thinned out and weeded. The plants during growth are liable to injury by severe frost, excessive rain, insects, fungi, and the growth of a root-parasite (Orobanche indica). The poppy blossoms about the middle of February, and the petals when about to fall are collected for the purpose of making &quot;leaves&quot; for the spherical coverings of the balls of opium. These are made by heat ing a circular-ridged earthen plate over a slow fire, and spreading the petals, a few at a time, over its surface. As the juice exudes, more petals are pressed on to them with a cloth until a layer of sufficient thickness is obtained. The leaves are forwarded to the opium-factories, where they are sorted into three classes, according to size and colour, the smaller and dark-coloured being reserved for the inside of the shells of the opium-balls, and the larger and least coloured for the outside. These are valued respectively at 10 to 7 and 5 rupees per maund of 82f lb. The collection of a FIG. 2. Opium Poppy Capsules, &c., 3 natural size, a, capsule showing mode of incision practised in Turkey ; b, capsule as incised in India ; c, nushtur, or instrument used in India for making the incisions. Drawn from specimens in the Museum of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. opium commences in Behar about 25th February, and continues to about 25th March, but in Malwa is performed in March and April. The capsules are scarified vertically (fig. 2, b) in most dis tricts (although in some the incisions are made horizontally, as in Asia Minor), the &quot;nushtur&quot; or cutting instrument being drawn twice upwards for each incision, and repeated two to six times at intervals of two or three days. The nushtur (fig. 2, c) consists of three to five flattened blades forked at the larger end, and separated about one -sixteenth of an inch from each other by winding cotton thread between them, the whole being also bound together by thread, and the protrusion of the points being restricted to one-twelfth of an inch, by which the depth of the incision is limited. The operation is usually performed about three or four o clock in the afternoon, and the opium collected the next morning. In Bengal a small sheet-iron scoop or &quot; seetoah &quot; is used for scraping off the dried juice, and, as it becomes filled, the opium is emptied into an earthen pot carried for the purpose. In Malwa a flat scraper is employed, a small piece of cotton soaked in linseed oil being attached to the upper part of the blade, and used for smearing the thumb and edge of the scraper to prevent adhesion of the juice ; sometimes water is used instead of oil, but both practices injure the quality of the product. Sometimes the opium is in a fluid state by reason of dew, and in some places it is rendered still more so by the practice adopted by collectors of washing their scrapers, and adding the washings to the morn ing s collection. The juice, when brought home, is consequently a wet granular mass of pinkish colour, from which a dark fluid drains to the bottom of the vessel. In order to get rid of this fluid, called &quot;pasewa&quot; or &quot;pussewah,&quot; the opium is placed in a shallow earthen vessel tilted on one side, and the pussewah drained off. The residual mass is then exposed to the air in the shade, and regularly turned over every few days, until it has reached the proper consistence, which takes place in about three or four weeks. The drug is then taken to the Government factory to be sold. It is turned out of the pots into wide tin vessels or &quot;tagars,&quot; in which it is weighed in quantities not exceeding 21 lb. It is then examined by a native expert (purkhea) as to impurities, colour, fracture, aroma, and consistence. To determine the amount of moisture, which should not exceed 30 per cent., a weighed sample is evaporated and dried in a plate on a metallic surface heated by steam. Adul terations such as mud, sand, powdered charcoal, soot, cow-dung, powdered poppy petals, and powdered seeds of various kinds are easily detected by breaking up the drug in cold water. Flour, potato- flour, ghee, and ghoor (crude date-sugar) are revealed by their odour and the consistence they impart. Various other adulterants are sometimes used, such as the inspissated juice of the prickly pear, extracts from tobacco, stramonium, and hemp, pulp of the tamarind and bael fruit, mahwah flowers, and gums of different kinds. The price paid to the cultivator is regulated chiefly by the amount of water contained in the drug. When received into the Government stores the opium is kept in large wooden boxes hold ing about 50 maunds and occasionally stirred up, if only a little below the standard. If containing much water it is placed in shallow wooden drawers and constantly turned over. During the process it deepens in colour. From the store about 250 maunds are taken daily to be manufactured into cakes. Various portions, each weighing 10 sers (of 2 T V K&amp;gt;), are selected by test assay so as to ensure the mass being of standard consist ence (70 per cent, of the pure dry drug and 30 per cent, of water), and are thrown into shallow drawers and kneaded together. The mass is then packed into boxes all of one size, and a specimen of each again assayed, the mean of the whole being taken as the average. Before evening these boxes are emptied into wooden vats 20 feet long, 3^ feet wide, and 1| feet deep, and the opium further kneaded and mixed by men wading through it from end to end until it appears to.be of a uniform consistence. Next morning the manufacture of the opium into balls commences. The work man sits on a wooden stand, with a brass cup before him, which he lines with the leaves of poppy petals before-mentioned until the thickness of half an inch is reached, a few being allowed to hang over the cup ; the leaves are agglutinated by means of &quot;lewa,&quot; a pasty fluid which consists of a mixture of inferior opium, 8 per cent, of pasewa, and the &quot;dhoe&quot; or washings of the vessels that have contained opium, and the whole is made of such consistence that 100 grains evaporated to dryness over a water-bath leave 53 grains of solid residue. All the ingredients for the opium-ball are furnished to the workmen by measure. When the inside of the brass cup is ready a ball of opium previously weighed is placed on the leafy case in it, and the upper half of it covered with leaves in the same way that the casing for the lower half was made, the overhanging leaves of the lower half being pressed upwards and the sphere completed by one large leaf which is placed over the upper half. The ball, which resembles a Dutch cheese in size and shape, is now rolled in &quot;poppy trash&quot; made from the coarsely - powdered leaves, capsules, and stalks of the poppy plant, and is placed in an earthen cup of the same size as the brass one ; the cups are then placed in dishes and the opium exposed to the sun to dry for three days, being constantly turned and examined. If it becomes distended the ball is pierced to liberate the gas and again lightly closed. On the third evening the cups are placed in open frames which allow free circulation of the air. This operation is usually completed by the end of July. The balls thus made consist on the average of Standard opium 1 ser 7 50 chittacks. Lewa 3 - 75 ,, Leaves (poppy petals) ,, 5 43 ,, Poppy trash 50 ,, 2 sers 1 IS chittacks. The average number of cakes that can be made daily by one man is about 70, although 90 to 100 are sometimes turned out b} clever workmen. The cakes are liable to become mildewed, and require constant turning and occasional rubbing in dry &quot;poppy trash &quot; to remove the mildew, and strengthening in weak places with fresh poppy leaves. By October the cakes are dry and fairly solid, and are then packed in chests, which are divided into two tiers of twenty square compartments for the reception of as many cakes, which are steadied by a packing of loose poppy trash. 1 Each case con tains about 120 catties (about 160 lb). The chests need to be kept in a dry warehouse for a length of time, but ultimately the opium ceases to lose moisture to the shell, and the latter becomes extremely solid. This is known as provision &quot; opium. For home consumption Bengal opium is prepared in a different shape, and is known as Abkari or excisable opium. It is exposed to the heat of the sun until it contains only 10 per cent, of moist ure, and is then formed into square cakes of 2 lb each, which are wrapped in oiled paper, or it is made into flat square tablets. In this form it has not the aroma of the ball-opium. The care bestowed on the selection and preparation of the drug in the Bengal opium-factories is such that the merchants who purchase it rarely require to examine it, although permission is given to open at each sale, any number of chests or cakes that they may desire. In Malwa the opium is manufactured by private enterprise, the Government levying an export duty of 600 rupees (60) per chest. It is not made into balls but into rectangular or rounded masses, and is not cased in poppy petals. It contains as much as 95 per cent, of dry opium, but is of much less uniform quality than the Bengal drug, and, having no guarantee as to purity, is not con- 1 This is purchased from the ryots at 12 annas per maund.