REPORT BY DR. GEORGE WATT, M.B., C.M., C.I.E.                           231

fibre is a regular article of trade," and on his expectation that there may " possibly" be
" tracts of the central tableland of India similar to the Godavery district which could easily
grow the fibre-yielding forms of the plant." As regards the growth of hemp fibre
in the Godavery district, there should be no difficulty in finding out what the real fact is,
i.e., whether the " hemp" grown there is "sunn hemp," the product of a plant of the pea
family named Crotalaria juncea or ganja hemp. If the latter, then it might be worth
while to repeat, on a small scale, the Honourable Company's experiment of growing from
European seed.

5.  The inner valleys of the Himalayas appear to me to be so handicapped by the heavy
cost of carriage of their produce to a seaport as to make it unlikely that hemp fibre grown
in them could compete successfully in the London market with fibre grown on the continent
of Europe. Moreover, when one considers the number of fibre-yielding plants which are
known to be indigenous to India, one rather doubts the expediency of selecting for encourage-
ment the cultivation of a species of which even the fibre-yielding race yields a narcotic so
potent as charas.

6.  I regret that I am unable to explain the precise meaning of Dr. Watt in the sentence
alluded to by you and which ends as follows: " tracts of country where fibre is produced, or
where bhang only can be grown as in regions of ganja or charas production." From the context,
I gather that Dr. Watt suggests that excise regulations should be relaxed in regions where
the Cannabis plant produces fibre, even although it may also (as it in fact does) produce charas.