government of India, and controls the salt resources of Rajputana and the Punjab, and (2) the salt revenue authorities of Madras and Bombay. The consumption of salt per head in India varies from 7 lb. in Rajputana to 16.02 lb. in Madras. The salt duty, which stood in 1888 at Rs. 2½ per maund, was reduced in 1903 to Rs. 2, in 1905 to Rs. 1½ and in 1907 to R. 1 per maund, the rate being uniform all over India. In 1907-1908 the gross yield of the salt duty was £3,339,000, of which more than one-fourth was derived from imported salt. Opium. The heading _Opium_ in the finance accounts represents the duty on the export of the drug. The duty on local consumption, which is included under excise, yielded £981,000 in 1907-1908. The opium revenue proper is derived from two sources: (1) a monopoly of production in the valley of the Ganges, and (2) a transit duty levied on opium grown in the native states of western India, known as Malwa opium. Throughout British territory the growth of the poppy is almost universally prohibited, except in a certain tract of Bengal and the United Provinces, where it is grown with the help of advances from government and under strict supervision. The opium, known as "provision opium," is manufactured in government factories at Patna and Ghazipur, and sold by auction at Calcutta for export to China. The net opium revenue represents the difference between the sum realized at these sales and the cost of production. Malwa opium is exported from Bombay, the duty having previously been levied on its passage into British territory. In 1907-1908 the net opium revenue from both sources amounted to £3,576,000. The Chinese government having issued an edict that the growth and consumption of opium in China should be entirely suppressed within ten years, the government of India accordingly agreed in 1908 that the export of opium from India should be reduced year by year, so that the opium revenue would henceforth rapidly decline and might be expected to cease altogether. In 1908 an international commission that met at Shanghai passed resolutions inviting all the states there represented to take measures for the gradual suppression of the manufacture, sale and distribution of opium, except for medicinal purposes.