HUMULUS LUPULUS. ORD. XLL Scabride. 91 
plants) might be imported from abroad, though really wild at home. The 
female plants are very abundantly cultivated in the counties of Kent, Surry, 
Suffolk, and Essex, for the use of the brewers, who consume large quantities 
of the strobiles in the brewing of malt liquors. 
There is but one species of the genus Humulus; the male and female 
flowers are on separate plants. The roots are branching, from which arise 
many long, twining, rough, angular, flexible stems, which support themselves 
by twining round bodies that may be placed near them. The deaves are op- 
posite, in pairs, petiolate, cordate or entire, serrated, of a dark green on the 
upper disc, paler beneath; both the leaves and petioles are scabrous, with 
minute prickles, and at the base of each leaf-stalk are two interfoliaceous, 
entire, reflected, smooth stipules. The flowers are axillary or terminal, and 
furnished with bracteas ; the males are in drooping panicles of a pale green- 
_ish-yellow colour; the calyx consists of five oblong, concave, minutely ser- 
rated leaflets. The filaments are five, capillary, and supporting oblong an- 
thers, which open at the apex by two pores. The female flowers are in 
solitary, pendulous, ovate cones or strobiles, composed of membranous scales 
of a pale greenish colour; tubular, from being rolled in at the base, and 
containing the germen, which is small, supporting two short, subulate | 
styles, tipped with awl-shaped, downy stigmas. The seed, which is enclosed 
“in the tubular part of the scale, is round, flattish, truncated, and of a bay 
brown colour. Figure (a) female flower, (6) the germen and styles, (c) male 
flower, (d) back of an anther magnified, (¢) front of an anther, shewing the 
pores by which they open at top. 
The hop is not confined to Britain, but is found in many parts of Europe, 
~ and also in America. ‘The culture of this plant was introduced into Eng- 
land from Flanders, about the year 1524, and the strobiles were first used for 
preserving malt liquor in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII.; but 
the prejudice against them continued for a long period, as the citizens of 
London, a century afterwards, petitioned Parliament to prevent their use.* 
At the season when the strobiles are sufficiently ripe, the plants are cut, 
a foot or two from the ground, and the poles on which they were supported, 
pulled up. The strobiles are then cautiously picked off, care being taken to 
* 'The prejudices of the present times are probably as great as those in former days, for 
the brewers are now subject to severe penalties, who use any other bitter for preserving 
malt liquor, although many others are equally wholesome. 
N2 
