would be strange if he could not tell us what
they are.

We reach Dick's cottage. His "dame" is
busy in the garden. He points her out with
pride, and describes her as the most industrious
of women, and the best of housewives. He
was a widower when he married Doll, his present
helpmate, twelve years ago. It was at hop-
picking time, and she was the best of the pickers.
Dick was foreman of the work. It was not the
first season he had "minded" her. But this
time, when the work was over, Dick minded
her in another sense, and asked whether she
would return home with the others, or stay in
the country with him? So she and her friends
came to sup at Dick's house. Dick had boiled
a plum-pudding beforehand. Doll cooked the
steaks and potatoes, and Doll has cooked Dick's
steaks and potatoes ever since. The cottage is
his freehold, standing in a bright and cheerful
spot, and he says there is not a man in the three
kingdoms happier than he is. So he thinks,
and so it must be, since " there's nothing good,
or bad, but thinking makes it so."

We now reach that part of the road which
passes, by a deep cutting, through the crest of
the hill; on reaching the spot where the road
passes straight down the opposite side of the
hill, a beautiful and extensive view of the Weald
of Kent comes suddenly upon us. The hill we
have just passed consists of the famous Kentish
rag, which forms the subsoil of one of the richest
tracts in England. There are four soils: the
rag, brick-earth, hassock sand, and "red pin,"
the last an irony earth comparatively poor; the
sand is tolerable, but has too much sand and
too little of other things in it. But the rag and
brick-earth are splendid. The rag is a dark grey
sandstone containing clay and (I suppose), the
phosphates, silicates, and all other good things.
The soil formed from it is never wet, because
the fissures in the rock below, allow the water
to escape. I passed through a fine hop-garden
at Cox Heath, where the ragstones might have
been gathered from the surface with a shovel.
But usually this soil and the brick-earth are of
great depth; there is no fear of breaking the
staple; the deeper the soil is ploughed, the
deeper and richer the seed-bed will be. But
many are the soils—especially chalks, gravels,
and poor clays—where the staple must not be
broken, and the soil can only be deepened and
improved by very slow degrees. It will take
two lives and constant manuring to give some
soils six inches of depth, and here the same may
be got in two years without manure. The rags
of Kent mean riches.

Behind a hill, near Battle, I passed under a
railway arch and came to a hop-garden,
containing what was said to be the finest crop of
the year in England. I saw none to compare
with it in Kent and Sussex. There were three
poles to a hill. The poles bent with the heavy
weight of flowers which hung in festoons from
pole to pole, and from hill to hill. The
tender shoots of bine crossed every path with
their fragrant load of hops, so delicate and
graceful that the clumsiest rustic passed through
it gently. This hop is the sort called Jones's;
and as it grew in a damp bottom with a brook
running through it, and an osier bed close
by, it had withstood excessive drought. The
flower was very large. In the same garden was
a piece of that beautiful, late, long, square, four-
sided hop, the colgate.

This is the way to estimate a crop. At
two yards apart from hill to hill, the number
of hills to an acre is one thousand two
hundred and ten. A bushel of dried hops, of
average quality, weighs a pound and a half.
Therefore a bushel to a hill weighs sixteen
hundredweight an acre, and this is a great crop,
though even this has been greatly exceeded. The
average growth of the kingdom between 1840 and
1849 inclusive was six and a half hundredweight
to the acre, as appears by the amount of duty
paid. The ground covered with hops in
England, now sixty-four thousand acres, has
increased in quantity by one half in the last ten
years. In Kent, the space taken for hops, now
forty-one thousand acres, has nearly doubled;
in Sussex, it remains at about ten thousand.
Meanwhile the duty on importation and the
excise duty on English-grown hops have both
been repealed, and the growth of hops abroad
has been greatly encouraged. In Bavaria, there
is a finer climate than in Kent, and a nobler
river than the Medway. The plains of the
Danube, are perhaps unrivalled for fertility.
Kentish labourers were sent out in 1863 to show
German farmers the English system of hop
cultivation, especially the process of drying and
preparing for market. The result is, that some
of the best flavoured hops used for our bitter
beer, come from Bavaria. France, Germany,
Belgium, Poland, and America, compete with
the home grower. Hops therefore must find
their level in price. They must be cultivated
only on the soils best suited for them;
and in all probability, the acreage of English
hop-grounds, which increased so greatly under
the sudden stimulus of the repeal, will be
reduced.

Hops were first introduced from Flanders in
1525, and soon afterwards there was a petition
to parliament against their use in beer, on the
ground that the hop was "a wicked weed that
would spoil the taste of the drink, and endanger
the people." Our annual consumption is now
about five hundred thousand hundredweight a
year; and within the next ten years the repeal
of the malt tax and the increase of the population
will probably double it. Thus, hop-growing
has room for expansion; and whatever happens,
it must always be a favourite pursuit:
interesting as regards the cultivation and the
details of management: fascinating because of
the speculative nature of the trade. The crop
ranges from nothing up to twenty hundredweight
per acre, and the price is almost as variable.
Nothing per hundredweight may easily
be realised, by overstanding the market till the
hops become old; for every year they degenerate
in quality. The very high prices of former times
are hardly likely to return, now that the area
of growth is so widened. But the range is still