It is cultivated in Turkey, India, Persia, Egypt, Algeria and Australia, as well as in China.

I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut, Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure.

These flowers were of the reddish kind.

In China they have the white, red and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained to the spot by an unseen power.

The seeds are sown in November and December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not so formerly.