18 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. II.

is described as a process so difficult and laborious that very little of it is prepared.
It may be noted that selected flower heads from the bhang cultivation of Sind are
used as ganja (ghundi), though it is of inferior quality. The production of charas
is not mentioned; but from the account of the cultivation for ganja in Bombay and
Gwalior, it would appear that the production of that form of the drug (charas)
depends on the quantity of resin secreted in the flower head and the economy of
extracting it rather than on any quality inherent in the resin.

Dr. Watt's impression that Cannabis is cultivated for hemp in the Godavari
districts seems to arise out of the confusion which has always existed in Madras
reports on the subject of the hemp drugs, and from which the subject is not yet
quite clear in that Presidency. Other fibre plants, such as Crotalaria juncea and
Hibiscus cannabinus, whose products go under the name of hemp, have been con-
founded with the true hemp. It is now definitely stated in paragraph 7 of the
letter from the Board of Revenue, Madras, to the Commission, No. 1839, dated
1st May 1894, on the authority of the Deputy Director, Agricultural Branch of the
Board of Revenue, that "Cannabis sativa is never grown in this Presidency for
fibre." Attention may in this connection be drawn to pages 3 to 5 of Dr. Royle's
work on the "Fibrous Plants of India." He explains the effect of the Indian
method of cultivating hemp and flax, involving free exposure of the individual plants
to light, heat, and air, in causing the fibre to become woody and brittle instead of flex-
ible and strong. He contrasts the European method of cultivation by thick sowing,
which, with a temperate climate inducing slow growth, conduces to height and
suppleness in the plant and its fibres. He admits that the Indian climate with
its comparatively short seasons, great alternations of dryness and of moisture,
and considerable extremes of temperature is not the best suited to the production
of good flax and hemp. But he suggests that it might be possible by modifica-
tions of culture and the selection of suitable sites to grow both these plants
within the limits of India so as to yield useful fibre. In the Himalayas only are
to be found climate and mode of cultivation of the hemp plant resembling those
of Europe.