380 NORTH-IVESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH. procured, together with the comparative certainty of a fair crop and a remunerative price. The Government factory for the manufacture of the opium of conmerce is at Ghazipur, in the centre of the best poppy-growing region. The total exports of opium from the North-Western Provinces and Oudh amounted to 1168 tons in 1879, and 2124 tons in 1881. Forests, Jungle Products, etc.-In 1883, the area of demarcated forest reserve was 3339 square miles, about one-third of it lying in Oudh. The main forest products of the Provinces are timber, gums, resins, dyes, and tans, but none of them are produced in sufficient quantities to form t articles of export. The forests, excepting small tracts in Jhansi, Lálitpur, and Banda, lie along or near the Hiinálayas. The principal timber trees are—sál (Shorea robusta), mango (Mangifera indica), shisham (Dalbergia Sissoo), tún (Cedrela Toona), babúl (Acacia arabica), pine or chír (Pinus longifolia), ním (Melia Azadirachta), box (Buxus sempervirens). The gums are mostly the exudations of the following trees—the kikar or babúl (Acacia arabica), common all over the North-Western Provinces; the khair (Acacia Catechu), common in the sub-Himalayan tracts; the reunja (Acacia leucophlea), common in Saharanpur and in the Jumna ravines of the Doáb; the dhák (Butea frondosa), common in all jungles, and supplying the astringent gum known as kamárkás in the native bázárs. The chief resin is obtained from the pine or chír, a conifer common throughout the Kumáun Division, and the principal source of the turpentine in native use. Tar is sometimes made from its chips, which also supply an excellent torch. A red dye called ál is obtained from the root of the Morinda citrifolia, found throughout Bundelkhand. For use the roots are mixed with sweet oil and ground to powder in a small hand-mill. Cloth is dyed by being boiled with the powder thus procured. A crimson dye is obtained from safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), the cultivation of which is almost wholly confined to the Meerut Division, where the safflower is sown along with gram or carrots. The flowers contain a yellow and a red pigment. If intended for export, they are crushed while a stream of water flows over them and carries off the yellow colouring matter. They are then made up into round flat cakes for market. If intended for local use, they are not deprived of the yellow pigment until immediately before the dyeing process, when it is removed as above, and the crushed fiorets kneaded up with an alkali (generally sajji, an impure carbonate of soda). An orange dye is obtained from the flowers of harsingha (Nyctanthes Arbor-tristis). The tree is most common at the foot of the Himalayas. The flowers are sweet-scented, and open only at night. They fall in numbers towards morning, and are then collected, dried, and kept till needed for
