On the 25th of March I reached Dinapore, a large military station, sufficiently insalubrious, particularly for European troops, the barracks being so misplaced that the inmates are suffocated: the buildings run east and west instead of north and south, and therefore lose all the breeze in the hottest weather. From this place I sent the boat down to Patna, and proceeded thither by land to the house of Dr. Irvine, an old acquaintance and botanist, from whom I received a most kind welcome. On the road, Bengal forms of vegetation, to which I had been for three months a stranger, reappeared; likewise groves of fan and toddy palms, which are both very rare higher up the river; clumps of large bamboo, orange, _Acacia Sissoo, Melia, Guatteria longifolia, Spondias mangifera, Odina, Euphorbia pentagona, neriifolia_ and _trigona,_ were common road-side plants. In the gardens, Papaw, _Croton, Jatropha, Buddleia, Cookia,_ Loquat, Litchi, Longan, all kinds of the orange tribe, and the cocoa-nut, some from their presence, and many from their profusion, indicated a decided change of climate, a receding from the desert north-west of India, and its dry winds, and an approach to the damper regions of the many-mouthed Ganges. My main object at Patna being to see the opium Godowns (stores), I waited on Dr. Corbett, the Assistant-Agent, who kindly explained everything to me, and to whose obliging attentions I am much indebted. The E.I. Company grant licences for the cultivation of the poppy, and contract for all the produce at certain rates, varying with the quality. No opium can be grown without this licence, and an advance equal to about two-thirds of the value of the produce is made to the grower. This produce is made over to district collectors, who approximately fix the worth of the contents of each jar, and forward it to Patna, where rewards are given for the best samples, and the worst are condemned without payment; but all is turned to some account in the reduction of the drug to a state fit for market. The poppy flowers in the end of January and beginning of February, and the capsules are sliced in February and March with a little instrument like a saw, made of three iron plates with jagged edges, tied together. The cultivation is very carefully conducted, nor are there any very apparent means of improving this branch of commerce and revenue. During the N.W., or dry winds, the best opium is procured, the worst during the moist, or E. and N.E., when the drug imbibes moisture, and a watery bad solution of opium collects in cavities of its substance, and is called Passewa, according to the absence of which the opium is generally prized.