26 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. III.
The same witness gives the name of another hemp plant as badal, saying that
it is known to grow in the Waziri Hills about 50 miles to the west of Dera
Ismail Khan. He describes its leaf as being as broad as that of the madar,
which shews that this also is not the true hemp.
Spontaneous growth in the plain
country.
48. Witness (41) mentions the wild plant as growing scantily on the banks of
canals and in waste places in the Delhi district, and
its occurrence in one tahsil of the Firozpur district is
stated by another witness. These statements may very well be correct, but they
do not imply a growth which can properly be called wild in the sense in which
the word is now being used, but only a casual and accidental growth. One or two
witnesses talk in a general way about spontaneous growth in all districts.
Area of wild growth defined.
49. It will be a safe conclusion to say that the wild growth is only to be found
in the Himalayas and in a belt of country under
those mountains which is very narrow at Peshawar,
and gradually widens as it approaches the North-Western Provinces. Self-sown
hemp plants may be found elsewhere, but there is no tendency for them to run
wild outside the above tract.
Punjab States.
50. The wild growth occurs in the Himalayan States, and those of which any
part lies within the Sub-Himalayan bhang-bearing
belt.
No State shows any peculiarity in the
capacity for growing wild hemp. The Hill States are numerous, and need not
be named. Kapurthala and Patiala are the only States in the plain country
from which the spontaneous growth is reported, and it will doubtless be found in
those parts of the States which fall within the Punjab tract of wild growth.
Patiala has a considerable area of territory in the Himalayas, where the wild
growth will be found to exist. The Bahawalpur witnesses say that occasional
plants are found in graveyards—a not unlikely locality for such growth when there
is sufficient rainfall—as there are generally takias in connection with them to
which fakirs resort.
Central Provinces.
The wild growth does not exist.
51. There are only two witnesses in the Central Provinces who depose to
having seen the hemp plant in spontaneous growth.
One is Mr. Lowrie, Deputy Conservator of Forests,
and he can only name one village.
The other witness (52), Malguzar and
Honorary Magistrate, saw it when ganja was allowed to be cultivated in his
neighbourhood. Several witnesses make general statements, more or less of
a hearsay character, that the plant springs up on heaps of village refuse from
seed accidentally dropped. Mr. Drake-Brockman and many non-official and
official witnesses, who ought to know, including Mr. Robertson, who has charge
of the Nimar district, where ganja is cultivated and the escape from cultivation
would be likely to occur, make more or less positive statements that the spon-
taneous growth is not to be found. The growth observed by Mr. Lowrie is the
same kind of stray growth which is reported by other witnesses without having
been actually seen. It was not in the jungles, and had probably sprung directly
from seed thrown out of the houses. It is evident that in the Central Provinces
the spontaneous growth does not occur, except very occasionally, as a weed in
the neighbourhood of villages from seed accidentally dropped in suitable soil,
and that there is no tendency for this spontaneous growth to reproduce itself.