neither stiff, nor heavy, but good, dry, and deep.
Some writers have recommended mere miniature
trees, bushes, pyramids, and cordons, which
can be kept small by occasionally lifting them,
and by summer pruning. These are very
interesting toys for those who have a taste that
way, and very fine fruit can be so grown by
gardeners who understand the culture. But
in growing fruit for market there must be
economy of labour and space; there must be no
fancy work. These little trees are only one
story high, whereas the apple-trees of Kent are
five or six stories high, and produce five or
six times as many apples, on an equal space,
besides leaving room for a harvest of filberts
and cherries beneath.

From the toll-gate at Maidstone I looked,
on a fine August day, down the famous valley.
Great billowy clouds were rolling about the sky.
The forests of hops were seen in lights and
shadows that changed every moment; and these
contrasts, with the well-known effect of a rainy
atmosphere, made the grounds, far and near,
wonderfully distinct. In the course of this
natural illumination I could see, throughout
the green "forest," numerous patches tinged
with red. These patches were the prey of the
"red spider:" a disease, which sometimes
destroys the hops, causing every leaf to curl up as
if scorched by a fire-blast. I saw hop gardens,
in which the blasted leaves had all dropped off,
leaving the poles with the naked bine on them.
If the attack be early, the leaves and laterals
push again, and some hops may be grown.
Signs of the presence of red spider cause great
alarm, even when the pest appears in its mildest
form. The Borough market becomes agitated,
and hops rise in price. A heavy rain falls,
great improvement is reported, and then hops
go down! This troublesome parasite is
analogous to that which attacks vines, cucumbers,
and melons; and it generally makes its
appearance in very dry weather. If hop growers
could repeal the red spider, as they did the
duty, they would be happy men; there would
then ONLY be blight, fly, mould, mildew,
wind, season, and foreign growers to contend
against.

The immediate effect of the repeal of the
hop duty was a rise of price, until the foreign
growers could plant their ground and learn the
art of hop growing, which they have now
accomplished. The permanent effects are the
enormous increase of supply and a consequent
reduction of price.

Trudging up hill from Fairleigh I fell in with
a man tall, upright, and in full vigour, at sixty-
five. He carried a basket of fish, caught in
the Medway since three that morning. No one,
I afterwards found, could fill a basket quicker
than this old angler, and he could do most
things well that depended upon skill of eye and
hand. This man is a labourer, whose abilities
have raised him to the position of a sort of
professional man. He can prune a fruit-tree, dress
the hops, tally at picking, thatch a stack, make a
hurdle, and do whatever rustic labour is the most
in demand and the best paid. As his services are
always in demand, he is not bound down to one
employer. When the hops are safe in pocket,
he forsakes the fields for the garden. His
winter master is the owner of a green-house,
and for several months Dick is busy with
the geraniums and on the lawn among the
shrubs. While people of less perception would
puzzle over the meaning of botanical terms, he,
without knowing the words, has discovered
some of the subtleties they express. It was
interesting to hear Dick, as we walked on
together, describe his experiments in raising new
varieties of potatoes, or grafting several varieties
of geraniums on one stem. That last is a simple
operation to an adroit hand; but there is great
wonderment at the Waggon and Team, where
neighbours meet to smoke a friendly pipe and
settle the hop-crop, when Dick produces his
geranium, with scarlet Tom Thumb, white
Madam Vaucher, and Rose Superb, all blooming
on one stem. The potato seed is sown in
his winter master's green-house. The tubers
are as big as walnuts by Christmas; these are
sown out of doors in the spring, and thus the
new variety is obtained and a year saved. Plants
renewed by cuttings or grafts—as the vine,
apple, or potato—become weak sooner or later.
Renewal by seed produces a new individual,
with renewed strength; but the cutting, or
graft, is only a slice of the old stock. " Hows'ever,"
says Dick: "you are not agoing to
keep your new sort to yourself in Kent! If
anybody has a good thing, it will be sure to
spread. It may be in my garden this year, but
it will be in everybody's next year. And they
are right. A good thing should do good to us
all. When the 'golden tipped' hops were first
raised, the grower meant to keep them to
himself; but a small slip of hop will grow," says
Dick, with a wink, "and sure enough, they
hops will grow all over the county in a year or
two!"

My companion agreed to be my guide through
eight or nine miles of orchards and hops, by
Cox Heath, over the hill to Hunton, and to
Yalding railway station. Presently we met a
young woman, his niece, with a letter for the
post. This Dick took into his hand to see that
all was right, and detecting a flaw, said: " How
can Ampstead spell Hampstead?" The maiden
departed with strict injunctions to insert a
capital H, and a good one. If an intellectual
man be one who delights to cultivate his mind,
and prefers that to the pleasure of sense, Dick
is an intellectual man. His face shows it. The
three prominent features, nose, chin, and
forehead, are cast in nature's best mould. The Bible
and a few other books have formed Dick's sole
reading, but it is astonishing how cultivated his
mind is. His daily labour, not too severe, has
been amidst the works of nature, and an acute
and superior mind has found in them materials
for observation and reflection. Dick is clear-
headed and a fluent talker, expressing himself
in forcible language. A jumble of words
without meaning could never come from his
lips, because he has had to form his own ideas,
and, having shaped out his own thoughts it