The pale-purple poppy of the Mediterranean (_Papaver setigerum_) was cultivated hundreds—even thousands—of years ago in the South of Europe and on the Mediterranean shores of Africa—not for opium, but for the oil which can be expressed from the seed, “poppy-seed oil.” The oil is free from narcotic properties. The purple poppy is still cultivated for that oil in France, and poppy-seed oil is an article of commerce used as food, both in the pure state and for adulterating other oils. The earliest cultivation of this poppy is even as remote in Europe as 7000 years, for we find that the Swiss lake-dwellers of the Stone Age cultivated it, and that the variety they obtained was nearer to the wild _Papaver setigerum_ than to its cultivated derivative, the modern opium-poppy, _Papaver somniferum_. How and when it first was recognised that the narcotic substance “opium” could be prepared from the juice exuding from the cut capsule is not exactly known, but it is probable that it was not until the early Middle Ages that the poppy was cultivated for the habitual use of opium as a narcotic indulgence, and that its earlier cultivation was, as to some extent at the present day, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed, its use in medicine requiring but a very small supply. The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with the cultivated poppy. Homer mentions it, and at a much later period Theophrastus and Dioscorides do so. They call it “mekon,” and were aware of the somniferous properties of the sap. Dioscorides, whose wonderful book on plants dates from the first century of our era, speaks of the drug derived from the sap by the name “opos,” and it is from that word that the name “opium” has come. The Romans cultivated the poppy before the republic, and mixed its seeds with their flour in making bread. The story of King Tarquin taking the governor of a rebellious province into a poppy-field, lopping off the heads of the taller poppies with his stick, and then turning to his visitor, without a word, but with a look which said, “That is the way to govern”—is evidence of the very early cultivation of the poppy by the Romans. Hebrew writings do not mention the opium poppy, though it seems to be certain that it has been cultivated in Asia Minor for at least 3000 years. There is no evidence that the plant was cultivated in more ancient times in Egypt, although in Pliny’s time the Egyptians used the juice of the poppy medicinally. In the Middle Ages it was, and in our own day it is, one of the chief objects of cultivation in that country, especially for the manufacture of opium.