The cultivated variety _P. somniferum_ of the present day differs from the wild _P. setigerum_, in having the seed-capsule surmounted by ten or twelve stigmas (the free ends of the leaves which are united to form the capsule), instead of by eight as in the wild form. It seems that the introduction of the poppy from the shores of the Mediterranean into Persia, India, and China is due to Arab traders, and is coincident with the rise of Mohammedanism; and it is probable that it was valued and cultivated from that time onwards, not so much for the sake of its seed and oil, as for the narcotic juice, which was made up by Arabian “confectioners” into a kind of paste, and eaten, as were other vegetable extracts—such as “bang,” from hemp—for the sake of the pleasurable effects produced by its poisonous action on the nervous system. It is certain that the opium poppy does not occur at all in the wild state in the Middle and Far East. In 1516 opium was already an article of trade from India to China. The poppy was cultivated, and the use of opium known and frequent in India for some five centuries before that date. Probably the cultivation of the plant in China was not started until the eighteenth century. It was the Chinese who hit upon the mode of indulging in opium by smoking it in a pipe. There is no record, written or pictorial, of this practice earlier than 1730, about fifty years before which date (1680) we find the smoking of tobacco represented on Chinese pottery. Very soon the Chinese were not content to import their opium from India, but large areas were put under cultivation with the Indian poppy in China and Manchuria. For a century or more the export of opium from India to China continued and increased as the consumption of the drug increased, the native Chinese production not being sufficient to meet the demand. In 1730 and 1796 the Chinese Government issued edicts forbidding the smoking of opium, and in the last century the efforts of the Chinese authorities to prevent the importation of Indian opium, whether with a view to suppress a dangerous vice or to favour the home-grown article, led to war with England. In some parts of China—for instance, Amoy—three-fourths of the population are, or were until lately, opium-smokers. Now it is believed that the Chinese Government is genuinely determined to put a stop to the dangerous and enervating indulgence in this narcotic, and the opium-growers of India will have to limit their output, and employ their land and labour for other crops.