At the end of March the opium jars arrive at the stores by water and by land, and continue accumulating for some weeks. Every jar is labelled and stowed in a proper place, separately tested with extreme accuracy, and valued. When the whole quantity has been received, the contents of all the jars are thrown into great vats, occupying a very large building, whence the mass is distributed, to be made up into balls for the markets. This operation is carried on in a long paved room, where every man is ticketed, and many overseers are stationed to see that the work is properly conducted. Each workman sits on a stool, with a double stage and a tray before him. On the top stage is a tin basin, containing opium sufficient for three balls; in the lower another basin, holding water: in the tray stands a brass hemispherical cup, in which the ball is worked. To the man’s right hand is another tray, with two compartments, one containing thin pancakes of poppy petals pressed together, the other a cupful of sticky opium-water, made from refuse opium. The man takes the brass cup, and places a pancake at the bottom, smears it with opium-water, and with many plies of the pancakes makes a coat for the opium. Of this he takes about one-third of the mass before him, puts it inside the petals, and agglutinates many other coats over it: the balls are then again weighed, and reduced or increased to a certain weight if necessary. At the day’s end, each man takes his work to a rack with numbered compartments, and deposits it in that which answers to his own number, thence the balls (each being put in a clay cup) are carried to an enormous drying-room, where they are exposed in tiers, and constantly examined and turned, to prevent their being attacked by weevils, which are very prevalent during moist winds, little boys creeping along the racks all day long for this purpose. When dry, the balls are packed in two layers of six each in chests, with the stalks, dried leaves, and capsules of the plant, and sent down to Calcutta. A little opium is prepared of very fine quality for the Government Hospitals, and some for general sale in India; but the proportion is trifling, and such is made up into square cakes. A good workman will prepare from thirty to fifty balls a day, the total produce being 10,000 to 12,000 a day; during one working season 1,353,000 balls are manufactured for the Chinese market alone.