232 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [APP.

MEMO. BY BRIGADE-SURGEON-LIEUTENANT-COLONEL G. KING, M.B.,
  L.L.D., F.R.S., C.I.E., DIRECTOR OF BOTANICAL SURVEY OF INDIA.

1. The plant familiarly known as Indian hemp (Cannabis sativa, L.) is really wild in no
part of British India. But in all parts of India, and also in Upper Burma, plants of it may
be found growing without cultivation near villages and gardens where hemp is at present, or
has in former times been cultivated. In botanical phraseology, hemp is found in India, not
as an indigenous plant, but as an escape from cultivation.

2. By physical conditions, I understand soil and climate. As regards soil, the drug-
yielding variety is (as I am informed by Dr. Prain) grown on a large scale, and as a regular
crop, only in Rajshahve, in some parts of the tributary mehals of Orissa, and in some parts
of Central India. The soils of the tracts where it is so grown have not, so far as I am aware,
been analysed chemically; physically they are known to be friable and well drained. Soil,
however, does not appear to be a matter of much importance in the growth of the resin-
yielding hemp. For, with careful cultivation, it can, I understand, be grown as a garden
crop in any part of India. At elevations below 2,000 feet, the difficulty of cultivation is
very slight; from 2,000 to probably 9,000 feet there is no difficulty whatever. At higher
elevations than the latter it does not appear to be much grown. As regards climate there is
little to be said beyond that a period of continuous dry weather, extending over three or four
months of the year, is essential, and that temperatures like those prevailing in the middle
zone of elevation in the North-Western Himalaya appear to be the most favourable for the
development of the drug.