value : though it is said that if the male hop
were excluded from the garden, the flowers
throughout the ground would be wanting in
that yellow powder called the " farina," or
" condition," which is their chief virtue. For
this reason, one male hop plant in every
hundred groups is generally planted. Of the
hop cultivated there are eight or ten varieties,
of which that called " Goldings " is the best ;
but this, from its very luxuriance, is subject
to diseases which poorer but more hardy
kinds will escape. Some of each sort are,
therefore, generally planted ; though the spirit
of gambling which pervades this branch of
farming will induce others to run the risk of
growing only the better kind. After that
most succinct of Natural Histories, in which
Mr. Mavor shows how the horse, from his
mane to his hoofs, is " very useful to man," I
may here mention that the young shoots of
the hop-plant are eaten as a substitute for
asparagus ; that an infusion of its flowers
will dye wool yellow ; and that from the
stalks, dressed in the manner of flax, a strong
cloth is made in Sweden : so that some Mechi
among hop-growers may one day turn the bines
which are now wasted into hop-pockets ; and
may make the stalks carry the flowers to market.
An enthusiastic writer, who calls it " a
very elegant balsamic bitter," declares that it
may be employed medicinally in the shape of
powders, tinctures, extracts, infusions, decoctions,
conserves, plain and compound pills,
juleps, and apozems ; and that under one or
other of those forms, it will infallibly cure
hypochondria, cleanse kidneys, restore livers,
purify blood, remove spleen, stop colic, kill
worms, dispel jaundice, eradicate scurvy, and
destroy gout, regular or atonic. If only half
of this is true, no one can deny that the hop
plant is " very useful to man." Its flowers,
however, are known to be a powerful soporific.
A pillow of hops recommended for
the late King George the Third, in his illness
of 1787, was found to produce sleep when all
other means had failed : a secret which was
not known to his ancestor King Henry the
Fourth, when he uttered that beautiful
soliloquy upon sleep which was heard by some
good spirit in the lonely sick chamber, who
afterwards whispered it to the poet that it
might not be lost.

Emerging from the woods, just as the mists
are creeping away, and the sun is turning
from a dull red ball of fire to something like
itself again, I see nothing but hops on each
side of the river. All up the sides of the
valley, their heavy clusters, topping the high
poles, peep one over the other, like spectators'
heads in the pit of a theatre. And now I
spy the stone bridge with its four pointed
arches, where water, running down the wooden
flooring of an inclined plane, foams and roars
all day and all night; though a little girl
at a cottage tells me she cannot hear it at
times — losing it by long habit, as you lose the
ticking of a clock in a room, by listening to it.
And there, a few yards above the bridge,
struggling for a place among the hop grounds,
stands the old church of East Farleigh, like
three barns with a pointed spire. And here
I stop, and leave the river to wind away
and hide itself in a perfect forest of hop
plantations.

While my host runs his eye along the lines
of my letter, I read in his face that the sacred
name of friendship will not have been invoked
in vain. He does not think of hinting that
Saturday is a busy day; but, on the contrary,
congratulates me upon having chosen that day,
as presenting some features in hop-picking
not to be seen on any other. So we walk
together through the hop-garden, where the
strong bitter odour and the bright yellow of
the clusters, tell that they are ripe, till we
come to a stubble field, and find the pickers at
work upon the borders of the plantation. Men,
women, and children all pick hops. This is
why this employment is preferred by those
wandering bands who cut hay in the spring
and corn in the summer, and in the winter
live, or die, no one knows where. But these
are by no means the only class that come
hopping. Labourers, costermongers, factory
girls, shirt-makers, fishermen's boys, jolly
young watermen, and, they tell me, even
clerks out of employment, all throng the
Kentish highways at this time, attracted by
the opportunity of earning a couple of shillings
per day; and still the cry is more, and the
farmer, in plentiful seasons, is frequently
embarrassed for want of hands.

Pickers of hops escape their soporific influence.
There is no going to sleep with them;
though they handle hops, and smell hops, and
breathe hops, from dawn till sunset. The man
who, with his instrument — which he calls a
hop-dog, because it is a hook on one side and
a knife on the other (I don't know any better
reason) — cuts the bine about the roots, and
then hooks up pole, bine, and all, and lays it
across the pickers' bins, has enough to do to
keep ten pickers supplied. A sullen-looking
girl — her hair growing low down her forehead—
grumbles at being kept waiting a
moment. So does another young woman,
who has brought her infant family with her
in a covered child's waggon — egged on by a
surly murmur from a wild young man, with
white hair and eyebrows, who speaks a brogue
which is neither Irish, Scotch, Yorkshire, nor
West country, and who, being asked, "What
countryman are you? " replies with a noise
in his throat sounding like "Gurz'n," and
then grins; and being asked again, " Where
that is? " answers, "Gurz'n," and grins again:
after which the questioner gives up all hope
of discovering what countryman he is. But
a merry old woman, with a red face, says
something which I did not catch, and everybody
body laughs, and good-humour is restored.
Meanwhile the cutter makes a desperate
attack upon the poles; felling them so fast
that he has time to pull out a handkerchief