It is cultivated in a great many parts of the world--Turkey, Syria, Persia, France, China, the United States, Germany, Queensland, but especially in British India, where the immense plains at Malwa used to furnish opium worth about sixty million rupees annually (after deducting all expenses). This was mostly exported to China, and amounted to a tax of about threepence per head on every Chinaman; it was also sufficient to defray about one-sixteenth part of the expenses of our Indian Empire. The story of how Great Britain forced China to take our opium is not a creditable one nor agreeable to read. The plant was known in ancient Egypt, Persia, and Rome, and was used in China for at least two hundred years before our times. [Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_ _London and New York_ GATHERING RUBBER IN TEHUANTEPEC Incisions may be seen in the bark of the tree. The rubber milk runs out from these into the vessel held in the man's hand.] What is supposed to be the original wild plant from which the opium poppy was derived seems to have been cultivated in the ancient Swiss lake dwellings, for the seeds of _Papaver setigerum_ occur there in abundance. The price of the crop may amount to £90 or £120 per acre. Another very ancient plant is the Hemp, _Cannabis sativa_. It was known to Herodotus, who says that "in the country of the Massagetæ there is a tree bearing a strange produce which they casting into a fire inhale its fumes on which they straightway become drunk." It is a tall, rather handsome annual, with stems from three to fifteen feet high. It is cultivated all over the world, from the Equator to 60° north latitude, but for different purposes. In India it is chiefly for the resin, "haschisch, churrus, bhang." (That was the drug used by the Count of Monte Cristo.) In Russia it is for the seed and the fibre that the plant is cultivated, and in France, Italy, and Austria the fibre seems to be the most important product. Some of the plants produce only stamens or male flowers. The fibre given by these is stronger and more tenacious than that of the female plant, which, however, is finer and more supple. The fibre obtained from the cold northern districts of Russia is said to be the strongest of all. The preparation of the fibre is a long, tedious, and laborious operation. It is also unhealthy, for the fibre has to be "retted" (steeped in water so that the soft parts decay), "scotched" (that is the hard wood must be broken and removed), and "heckled." This last process is familiar to all who are interested in political matters. It consists of being drawn on hard points difficult to traverse and of a very fine and sharp character! Hemp is the commonest fibre for string, rope, etc.; it used to be employed for sailmaking by the Romans. Catherine de' Medici is said to have had two chemises made of hemp.