( 22 )
found to be 2½ cubic feet. Had therefore the crops of 1890-91 and 1891-92
been thus treated, their bulk would have been reduced to 12,769 (say 13,000)
cubic feet for the former, and to 15,043 (say 15,500) cubic feet for the latter
.
year. These figures seem then to show that the provision of golah ac-
commodation sufficient for the housing of the gánjà crop is perfectly prac-
ticable.
The possibility of making these cakes depends on the stickiness of the
flower-tops that form the gànjá. But, as has been already shown in Chapter
VII, at least 10 per cent. of the resin to which this stickiness is due is lost in the
process of manufacture. The parts that form the flowering-tops adhere firmly
to each other, because from the commencement of the process of manufacture
they have been closely in contact, and the resin which causes the adhesion
therefore could not be rubbed off. The small leaves and bracts and flowers on
the outside are thus closely attached to and protect those next beneath; these in
turn are attached to those within, and so on to the centre of the flowering-top.
But the outer side of the outmost leaves and bracts and flowers have to a
large extent been denuded of resin. This resin, as has been explained, attached
itself to the feet or hands of the cultivators during the process of manufacture.
It is in consequence of this denudation that it has been found impossible to
make the heads adhere by passing them between rollers. There is not
enough resin on the outside to make them adhere, and the pressure is
exerted for too short a time to squeeze out from within the heads sufficient
resin to effect union. Even when placed under heavy weights or com-
pressed in such a machine as the one referred to, it is found that, unless
the cakes are subjected to pressure for some hours, nothing like permanent
adhesion takes place. And even then it is found that if exposed to the
air for some time, particularly if the air is moist, the apparently homogenous
cake becomes in a short time resolved into the loose flowers-heads, or chùr, of
which it is composed. This is an extremely fortunate circumstance, since the
cultivators and dealers who were interested spectators of the experimental cake-
manufacture, while admitting the great advantages that would accrue from
having gánjà exported without twig and in cakes of a definite weight, feared
that there would be greater loss in breaking up these cakes for retail sale than
there is in handling chúr. When, however, they saw that the disintegration
which the cakes spontaneously undergo on exposure simply reconverts them into
chùr, this objection vanished. They naturally have raised other objections against
this as they would against any other procedure outside their previous experience,
and some of them have expressed the belief, while admitting that the chùr in
these cakes is in the meantime exactly like chùr' not made into cakes, that the
cakes will go bad owing to the pressure to which the gànjà has been subjected.
To this objection there is but one possible reply. Accordingly a number of
these cakes manufactured both from flat' and. from 'round' c hùr have
been made up into parcels and packed in straw and gunny precisely as
ordinary gànjà is packed. These parcels have been brought to Calcutta, to be
stored in the Government gànjà golahs till March 1894 or later, before being
opened and examined. - When the proper time comes it will therefore be
possible to test whether there be any foundation for the belief expressed by the
cultivators and golàdàrs. Similar quantities of gànjà of both sorts made into
the same cakes have been at the same time placed in tin boxes which
have been soldered down. These will be kept unopened also till March 1894
or later when they will be examined and compared with the gànjà merely
packed in gunny. A number of the cakes thus stored have already been
examined by the Member in charge,
The advantages of the proposed method of compression are first, reduction
in bulk of the crop. Instead of occupying (as it did in 1890-91) 38,360 cubic
feet, or (as it would have occupied in that year had it been reduced to chùr)
27,000 cubic feet, it would by this method have only occupied 13,000 cubic
feet. Similarly for 1891-92, instead of 37,164 cubic feet, or 32,000 cubic feet,
it would only have occupied 15,500 cubic feet, thus rendering it possible
for Government to store the whole of the crop in their golahs and making
it no longer necessary to permit its storage in the cultivators' houses.
Again, when it was being compressed it would be a simple matter to make the
weight of the cakes uniform (20 tolas—a quarter seer—has been suggested as a