| Show bow opium T gathered it is a sort of garden cultivation tha poppy plants being grown in lettla squares or beda intersected by tiny water channels for irrigation wherever this is possible abi growth of the plants is carefully tended and at length the tuna comes when barst out into flower and the fields iok like a sheet of silver aa the white petals of the flowers glisten in the morning dew these beautiful petals are the first produce of the crop for the women and children of the cultivators families come forth and pick them off one by one and carefully dry them 50 that they may serve afterward as the covering of the manufactured cakes of opium then the poppies with their bare capsule heads remain standing in the open field cabil it ia considered that they are ripe for lancing the cultivators then come forth in the evening and with aa implement not unlike the knives of a cupping instrument they tho capsule on its sides with deep incisions so that the juice may exude in the early morning the cultivators reappear with a scraping knife and their earthenware pots and they scrape off the exuded juice and collect it in their pots and this is crude opium black woods magazine |
