The principal crops in the neighbourhood of Ispahan are, first the poppy; this is the white variety, and has been grown with great success in Persia, particularly in Ispahan. It has enriched the peasants, but rendered grain and other produce much dearer, as, of course, much less is cultivated. The young plants are carefully thinned till they are a foot apart, and the ground is kept clear of weeds. When the poppy is in flower, and just as the petals are about to fall, the labourers, principally under the direction of men from Yezd, who are supposed to understand the method of collecting opium better than the rest of the Persians, score the seed-vessels with a small three-bladed knife, making three small gashes an eighth of an inch apart and three-quarters or half an inch long at one cut. This operation is performed in the afternoon. From these gashes the opium exudes in tears, and these are carefully collected at early dawn. The process is repeated a second, and even a third time; this latter is, however, unusual. And here lies the danger of the opium crop: should a shower of heavy rain descend the product is absolutely nil, the exuded opium being all washed away by the rain. All around Ispahan, where there is good land, and it is not exhausted, nothing can be seen for miles but these fields of white poppies, and the scenery is thus rendered very monotonous. The Persian farmer is fully alive to the value of manure, and makes it in a very simple manner. All the wood-ashes collected from a house, and the rest of the refuse-heap, are placed in the open street in a circular ridge mixed with mould. Into this is poured the contents of the cesspools, which are allowed to sink into the thirsty heaps of earth and ashes. The “koot,” or manure thus formed, is removed to the fields, allowed to dry in the sun, then mixed with more earth, and after a month or two scattered equally over the soil and dug in. Barley—which is used for the feeding of horses and mules, to the exclusion of oats, which are never grown—rice, and wheat, are cultivated largely. The barley of Persia is very fine; the wheat grown is the red variety. Beans, pulse, clover, sesamum, maize, cotton, castor-oil plant, cunjeet (a sort of colza), and nokōd, a grain like a pea, which is much used in cookery; potatoes, lettuces, spinach, are all largely raised. Tobacco, olives (near the Caspian), melons, and cucumbers form the rest of the crops; and millet is also grown. Quite one half of the barley is cut as grass for the horses, and not allowed to ripen. Tares are grown for the same purpose and cut green.