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how much of that area, how many of those localities, may be consi- 

 dered artificial ? Who can undertake to answer these questions with 

 certainty?" The two middle or intermediate queries are soon disposed 

 of as transcending human ability to resolve. The challenge contained 

 in the last question I will venture to accept, and undertake to answer 

 the inquiry with as much confidence and just as much (but not more) 

 certainty, as if the spontaneous origin of the oak were the subject of 

 debate. Propositions like these are not mathematical problems, ca- 

 pable of rigid, undeniable demonstration ; the weight of probability 

 must here be allowed to decide where proof of any more exact kind is 

 impossible. I need not recapitulate what I have said on the subject 

 of the Hop in a former part of these Notes (Phytol. iii. p. 382), to 

 which I beg to refer the reader, I will only add a few observations, 

 and cite a few authorities in support of the opinion there expressed. 

 It would be wasting time and trouble to be at the pains of refuting 

 the puerile and inconclusive objection against the indigenous origin 

 of the Hop in Britain by such as come armed with the traditionary 

 distich 



" Turkeys, carp, hops, pickerel and beer 

 Came into England all in one year.'' 



First, because like the cherries of Lucullus, it was unquestionably the 

 improved and cultivated produce of the hop-gardens of Flanders that 

 is to be understood, and not the wild bines or the burrs, which might 

 have been had from many a hedge and thicket, as I shall show anon ; 

 secondly, because there is a suspicious appearance of poetic licence, 

 or contempt for plain, matter-of-fact historical truth, about the gastro- 

 nomic bard, when he enumerates beer as one of the good things that 

 flowed in upon us during that memorable epoch, it being well known 

 that ale or beer was the national beverage long before hops were em- 

 ployed in its fabrication. Turner, who published his Herbal in 1568, 

 in his rather long account of "Hoppes," never once alludes to them 

 as an ingredient in malt liquors, but speaks only of their virtues from 

 the writings of others, nor does he drop a word that could lead to the 

 conclusion that they were cultivated in England at that period, yet he 

 says, " They grow also wylde in many places both of England and of 

 Germany," (Herb, part 2nd, p. 43, Cologne edit, black letter). Ge- 

 rarde and Parkinson both speak of the wild hop in England, but as 

 they refer also to the plant as cultivated for the brewer, I suppose 

 their testimony will be objected to on the ground that the hop had 

 become wild from the gardens. Neither in the Synopsis, nor in his 



