A large quantity of hemp cloth is still made for the British navy. The cloth, when finished, is cut up into lengths, made into bags and tarred. They are then used as coal sacks. There is also a quantity made into sacks which are intended to hold very heavy material. Hemp yarns are also used in certain classes of carpets, for special bags for use in cop dyeing and for similar special purposes, but for the ordinary bagging and sacking the employment of hemp yarns has been almost entirely supplanted by yarns made from the jute fibre.
Hemp is grown for three products--(1) the fibre of its stem; (2) the resinous secretion which is developed in hot countries upon its leaves and flowering heads; (3) its oily seeds.
Hemp has been employed for its fibre from ancient times. Herodotus (iv. 74) mentions the wild and cultivated hemp of Scythia, and describes the hempen garments made by the Thracians as equal to linen in fineness. Hesychius says the Thracian women made sheets of hemp. Moschion (about 200 B.C.) records the use of hempen ropes for rigging the ship "Syracusia" built for Hiero II. The hemp plant has been cultivated in northern India from a considerable antiquity, not only as a drug but for its fibre. The Anglo-Saxons were well acquainted with the mode of preparing hemp. Hempen cloth became common in central and southern Europe in the 13th century.
_Hemp-resin._--Hemp as a drug or intoxicant for smoking and chewing occurs in the three forms of bhang, ganja and charas.
1. _Bhang_, the Hindustani _siddhi_ or _sabzi_, consists of the dried leaves and small stalks of the hemp; a few fruits occur in it. It is of a dark brownish-green colour, and has a faint peculiar odour and but a slight taste. It is smoked with or without tobacco; or it is made into a sweetmeat with honey, sugar and aromatic spices; or it is powdered and infused in cold water, yielding a turbid drink, _subdschi_. _Hashish_ is one of the Arabic names given to the Syrian and Turkish preparations of the resinous hemp leaves. One of the commonest of these preparations is made by heating the bhang with water and butter, the butter becoming thus charged with the resinous and active substances of the plant.
2. _Ganja_, the guaza of the London brokers, consists of the flowering and fruiting heads of the female plant. It is brownish-green, and otherwise resembles bhang, as in odour and taste. Some of the more esteemed kinds of hashish are prepared from this ganja. Ganja is met with in the Indian bazaars in dense bundles of 24 plants or heads apiece. The hashish in such extensive use in Central Asia is often seen in the bazaars of large cities in the form of cakes, 1 to 3 in. thick, 5 to 10 in. broad and 10 to 15 in. long.