and rub the perspiration from his forehead;
and the surly young woman admits that " he
is keepin'  the pot a-bilin:" and now everybody
is busy. Down comes a hop-pole, and
away goes a swift hand up it, plucking the
flowers into a canvas bin upon a wooden
frame, carefully avoiding the leaves till it
gets near the top of the pole, when with one
stroke it rubs off all that remain, the few
little green leaves at top doing no harm.
The pole, with the bine stripped of its
flowers, is then thrown aside, just as the
cutter, who has served eight or nine in the
interval, drops another pole across the bin.
Each of these bins, I am told, holds fifteen or
twenty bushels, which is as much as the
fastest hand can pick in a day. The lower
parts of the poles — which are rotted by being
in the earth—are then cut away, and the poles
will be carefully stacked to serve for shorter
plants next year.

Here the oast-houses—most of them
brick-built and perfectly circular up to a
height of fourteen or fifteen feet, whence they
terminate in a cone, surmounted by a cowled
chimney, peculiarly shaped, to allow the vapour
from the hops to escape. To what shall I
compare them (for form, though not for size)
if not to those curiously clipped holly-trees in
the front garden of my friend Lilypaynter at
Twickenham, which, he says (being a little
eccentric), were meant to represent peacocks.
If they had been peacocks, who shall say how
he would have clipped their plumage to
represent holly-trees? But that has nothing
to do with hops. Some of the oast-houses
are square—but that shape is old-fashioned—
and some are long: for no two farmers agree
in any one particular as to the treatment of
hops. Even as to furnaces opinions are so
diverse, and are supported by such well-balanced
testimony, that I find all kinds of stoves here.
Entering at a narrow aperture, and darting
past the fire, through a heat that would roast:
me if I stood still in it, I find myself in a
circular chamber about eighteen feet in
diameter. In the midst, or rather, nearer
to the aperture, a clear fire of coke and
charcoal burns with thin hovering flames,
melting into air. Dipping his hand into a
barrel, my conductor brings up some rolls of
brimstone; and, casting them on the fire, a
bright blue glare lights up the chamber and
the faces of all present. This is found to give
a livelier colour to the hops, and is everywhere,
except at Farnham, adopted: colour
—although it is said to be not really a
sign of strength— being arbitrarily insisted
on by the purchaser. He knows you do it
with brimstone, but he does not care how
you do it, so that the hops look bright.
With a slightly disagreeable taste in the
throat, I escape into the next oast-house.
Here the fire is enclosed in a sort of oven,
quite hidden from sight. In another, I find
it in a brick stove with apertures for the
escape of heat, contrived by omitting a brick
here and there. These apertures are called
"horses  "  but, like the bine-cutter's "hop-dog,?
the origin of the name is involved in
obscurity. Here is a different kind of stove,
in which the fire is closely shut up, and
the heated air is confined and carried up to
the drying-floor by an inverted hollow cone,
formed of laths and clay, and lined inside
with smooth tiles.

Walking out into the open air again,
we mount a ladder to the cooling-room
attached to the oast-house. On a circular floor,
about fifty-six feet in circumference, formed
of strong wire netting and covered with coarse
hair cloth, through which the warm air
ascends, the hop-flowers lie to a depth of two
or three feet. One thousand and fifty pounds'
weight of green hops are here drying at once;
but through the little aperture at the top of.
this sugar-loaf chamber, some eight hundred
and fifty pounds of this weight will evaporate
into air, so that a day's work of the fastest
picker, weighing a hundred pounds when green,
will scarcely weigh twenty when dry. The air is
only moderately warm; but the grower, by long
experience (for nothing else will make a hop-
drier), knows without any thermometer that
it is exactly the proper heat—considering the
weather, the state of the hops, and a dozen
other things. The drying never ceases during
the time of picking, and is one of the most
difficult branches of the preparation. A man
must watch them day and night, turning them
frequently, until the stalks look shrivelled,
and burying his arms deep in the hops, he
feels them to be dry. This is generally after
eight or twelve hours' drying, after which they
are shovelled through the little door on to
the adjoining cooling-floor to make room for
more.

On the cooling-floor, I find a man stitching
hop-pockets, whom the method of my narration
compelled me to overlook when I passed him
just now. He is working on canvas hung
over a line, with needles that would not go
through any button-hole in the world. These
hop-pockets are not so coarse as an unjust
proverb would have them. Into these
pockets the hops are tightly wedged; and—
dusted from head to foot with the yellow
powder of the hops— a man in a blouse (which
used to be blue before hopping began,) is
continually passing to and fro, wheeling a
single pocket at a time upon a long truck,
from the steps of the cooling loft to a pair of
great scales in an open shed. Here stands
the supervisor, the representative of Her
Majesty's Board of Inland Revenue. He is a
very stout, red-faced man, with a white hat,
and a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and
carries a small bunch of hops in his mouth.
He holds a book in his hand full of lines and
figures, red and black, and looks very cross;
as one who, by the stern expression of his
features, would warn off all attempts at
bribery of any kind. Not so his lean, but
equally red-faced assistant. Though, perhaps,