( 39 )
while 3-5 above them have a single stamen each, the bracts with which stamens
are associated being thinner than the others. The end of the spike may or
may not be terminated by a flower; if it is, this flower is always a female, gene-
rally, however, deformed. The bracts with male flowers may or may not be
separated by intervals ; when they are compressed, they are thus converted into
structures like the male flowers on the male plant.
The whole plant is covered by fine hairs and has a somewhat sticky feel ;
this is owing to the presence among the hairs of modified hairs known as
glands. These glands are club-shaped at the end, and on the younger leaves
and bracts become filled with a resinous secretion that in the plant grown in
warm and in certain temperate countries possesses narcotic properties.
The leaves of the plants are somewhat rough, harsh to the touch ; many
of the cells of the epidermis contain a crystalline deposit of oxalate of lime.
The bark underneath the epidermis contains a number of delicate fibres running
more or less parallel to the stem ; these are longer, stronger, and more numerous
in male than in female plants, and in plants grown in cold than in those grown
in hot countries, and in the former case are rated out to produce the hemp fibre.
W i t h i n t h e f i b r o u s l a y e r i n a t h i n b r i t t l e w o o d s u r r o u n d i n g t h e p i t h . T h i s i n n e r p o r t i o n i s s p o k e n o f a s t h e ' r e e d ' i n f i b r e e x t r a c t i o n .
The root calls for no remark ; it is spindle-shaped, white in colour, breaking
very slightly into large branches, but densely covered with small fibres.
The fibre is used for making cordage and canvas ; the seeds contain a
fixed oil which is used in the arts ; they are also used as food, but not largely,
and they form one of the commonest birds' seed. The resinous substance, with
which is apparently associated an essential oil, is physiologically active, and is
employed medicinally and as an article of excise.
Another use to which the plant is sometimes put in Eastern Europe and.
Northern Asia is as a hedge-plant round gardens in order to keep off insect
blights. In India it would form but an indifferent protection ; it suffers
severely itself from 'red spicier,' and is infested by the caterpillars of moths and
butterflies and the grabs of beetles.
The plant is a native of Southern Siberia, being indigenous in the Kirghiz
steppes, and indeed throughout the country to the east of the Caspian Sea and
the Volga as far as Lake Baical and the province beyond. In other countries
w h e r e i t i s " w i l d " i t o c c u r s . I t i s g r o w n t h r o u g h o u t E u r o p e , N o r t h e r n A s i a a n d N o r t h A m e r i c a
as a fibre plant, as well as in Southern Africa. In North America it is used
also for its narcotic properties medicinally, in South Africa also for these
properties as an article of excise ; in Central Asia and the temperate Himalaya
it is used as in South Africa, both as a fibre-plant and as an intoxicant; in most
tropical countries the narcotic quality is that for which it is alone collected.
The hemp plant belongs to the nettle family, but to a very distinct section
of that family ; its nearest and indeed only intimate natural relationships are
with the hop-plant (Humulus Lupulus , L.) which is characterised also, it is inter-
esting to note, by the possession of narcotic properties.
CHAPTER II—HISTORY OF HEMP.
The history of hemp has been so repeatedly and fully discussed that it
may seem unnecessary to deal with it here. Apart, however, from the inherent
interest of the subject, to which indeed the very large number of previous notices
testifies, it now appears that most of the notices are somewhat misleading ; this
fact, coupled with the bearing of the historical details on the present use of
hemp, is my excuse for briefly reviewing what is known of the matter.
Though the plant is cultivated and appears in a wild state throughout all
tropical and temperate countries of both hemispheres, it is only wild in the
sense of being 'an escape from culture' in both the Americas, in Africa, and
throughout South-Eastern Asia. Nor is it tr
u l y w i l d i n E u r o p e ; t h e i d e a t h a t i t i s s o i n S o u t h - E a s t e r n R u s s i a h a s b e e n d i s p r o v e d . I n A s i a n o r t h o f t h e
Himalayas it has sometimes been said to be wild in Turkestan and in Northern
Persia, the countries immediately to the east and south of the Caspian Sea.
There is, however, every reason to think this incorrect; indeed, as regards