OPIUM  343
of  the  foreign  drug  consumed,  and  that  piior  to  1887  much
of  the  supply  for  that  province  passed  through  channels
which  did  not  lead  to  its  inclusion  in  the  figures  given
below.

1863
1867
1873
1879
1883
1888
1893
1897
1901
1905

Average  {  ».

Piculs.
15,120
26,297
24,300
37,952
27,504
45,040
32,416
26,816
27,250
34,195

29,689
47*2

Malwa.

Piculs.
34,967
34,006
40,910
39,509
34,632
33,127
28,694
19,635
21,799
16,034

30,331
48-2

Persian.

Piculs.
645
587
5,466
6,032
4,445
6,998
2,858*
435
1,691

2  16
4'6

Total.

Piculs.
50,087
60,948
65,797
82,927
68,168
82,612
68,108
49,309
49,484
51,920

62,936
100-0

Native  Opium
Opium  was  produced  in  China  before  the  vice  of  smoking
was  introduced,  and,  in  China  as  elsewhere,  was  valued  for
its  medicinal  properties.  There  is  no  evidence  to  show
that,  otherwise  than  medicinally,  the  Chinese  ever  took
opium  in  the  shape  of  pills,  as  was  for  centuries  the  practice
in  Central  and  Western  Asia  ;  and  the  evidence  is  all  against
the  supposition  that  the  Chinese  smoked  the  drug  because
they  already  produced  it.  Smoking  came  in  independently,
and  fed  on  foreign  or  native  supplies  indifferently,  as  evidenced ­
  by  the  fact  that,  at  the  date  of  the  first  Imperial
prohibition  of  the  evil  in  1729,  the  importation  of  foreign
opium  was  only  200  chests  a  year,  and  forty  years  later  did
not  exceed  1,000  chests.  But,  while  it  cannot  be  said  that
an  already  existing  production  of  native  opium  created  the
evil  of  smoking,  neither  is  it  wholly  true  that  the  evil  was
*  Formosa,  the  chief  consumer  of  Persian  opium,  passed  under
the  Japanese  flag  in  1895.