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

1. The plant familiarly known as Indian hemp (Cannabis saliva, 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. Frain) grown on a large scale, and as a regular crop, only in Raishahve, 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 mnch 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.