Hempseed is much appreciated by poultry and birds of all kinds (which makes both harvesting and sowing rather difficult); but the chief use of the seed is to furnish a fatty oil used for soft soap, lighting, and painting. The remains, after taking the oil, are employed as a cattle food, but it does not form a satisfactory cake. The chief interest of hemp is, however, the drug that is made from the resinous juice. No doubt this has the effect of keeping off dangerous insects, for it is said that plants of hemp even keep off insects from other plants planted close beside them. Sometimes the leaves and stalks are dried in order to make the drug "bhang." Many allusions to this substance are found in Eastern poetry, where it is called the "Leaf of Delusion," "Increaser of Pleasure," and "Cementer of Friendship," but madness is the result of addiction to its use. The resin is collected by making the labourers put on leather aprons, and then run up and down vigorously through the hempfields. The resin is then scraped off the leather, or off their skins if they prefer to do without leather. It is either eaten or smoked. Burton describes how at every cottage door in East Africa the Arabs may be seen smoking bhang with or without tobacco. "It produces a violent cough ending in a kind of scream after a few long puffs." In small doses haschisch (resin) has pleasant effects, for people experience pleasant illusions, good appetite, excitement, and laughter, followed, however, after an interval by stupor and sleep. People addicted to the use of haschisch roll their eyes violently, and have a wild, startled appearance. Naturally so dangerous a drug cannot be recommended unless under the most exceptional circumstances, but it is employed in cases of asthma and insomnia. Haschisch and opium are the two great curses of the Chinese, Malays, and the inhabitants of British India and the East. They may be compared to "drink" in this country, but they are important medicines. Among the most curious and interesting facts in Nature is the extraordinary variety of the ways in which at present gutta-percha and india-rubber are employed. We should not be able to ride bicycles, or in motor-cars; we could not use Atlantic cables and many electrical apparatus; our railway carriages would be most uncomfortable; golf would be impossible; we should have no waterproof coats and no goloshes [sic], if it were not for these valuable and extraordinary substances, india-rubber or caoutchouc, and gutta-percha. Their history is full of romance, but perhaps the most striking part of it is just this fact. Because a few (only a very few) plants found it necessary to protect their wood from burrowing beetles by a specially poisonous and elastic substance, _therefore_ we can play golf and enjoy free-wheel bicycles.