English opium. : The premium of thirty guineas was this Session presented to Messrs. Cowley and Staines, surgeons, of Winslow, Bucks, for cultivating four acres of the white poppy ...

  • Cowley, John
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English opium. : The premium of thirty guineas was this Session presented to Messrs. Cowley and Staines, surgeons, of Winslow, Bucks, for cultivating four acres of the white poppy ... Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the weeds which bore a general resemblance, excepting the papaver rhaas, which puzzled them a good while. It should be observed, that the difficulty was owing, in a great measure, to the imperfection of the crop; where that was good, it derived from continuity, a character, by which it was sufficiently distinguished from the surround¬ ing weeds. This hoeing was best performed by the hoe, figs. 3 and 4. The common hoe was found highly objectionable; it buried the very minute poppies with mould, which the other permitted to pass through; the weeds too, were very small, and more easily destroyed by merely cutting them below their seminal leaves, than by deeper hoeing. The poppies were next set out wdth the hoe, figs. 5 and 6 ; two boys being allowed to each hoer to pull up weeds and supernumerary poppies, to which the hoe could not be applied. The affixed paddle was found of great service in removing weeds from the off side of the row, A space of 4 inches from plant to plant, was deemed most advantageous, because, although heads as large and as numerous might be obtained by separating the plants to a foot apart, yet their situation would be more perilous, when strong winds happened, because such weather usually, either roots up the plant, or breaks the stem just above the earth, and neither the root nor stem of a poppy loaded with six heads, are supposed to possess double the strength of one bearing three. The setting out was finished by the latter end of May, after which, no difficulty was experienced in the manage¬ ment of the crop, nor any expense beyond what would have been incurred by keeping a crop of drilled beans equally clean on the same land. The hoeing was after¬ wards performed at per land ; this, with hand weeding,