SEPTEMBER. 285 



ing in winter fuel, as coals, wood, etc. ; ploughing 

 and sowing wheat upon the fallows, also after- 

 crops of tares, clover, early peas, etc. ; gathering 

 in orchard-fruit for sale, and for cider-making, and 

 gathering the hop-harvest, are the chief employ- 

 ments of this month. We have spoken of the pic- 

 turesque beauty of hop-gathering in the last month ; 

 but this month, in the hop counties, presents the 

 most general scene of hop-gathering. Throughout 

 Kent and Sussex, long groups are every where to 

 be seen pulling down the hop-poles covered with 

 the bine in full flower, picking them into the bins, 

 and conveying them away to the drying kilns. In 

 the hollows, and on the slopes af the Kentish hills, 

 the hop-grounds with their luxuriance of dark green 

 hop-vines hanging from the poles in masses of pale- 

 green flowers, their picturesque knots of gatherers, 

 men, women, and children, all having turned out, 

 their homely cottages peeping here and there, 

 and the drying-kilns sending up, at intervals, their 

 wreaths of thin white smoke, altogether form a 

 most cheering and true English sight. The whole 

 country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is 

 breathed forth from the drying-kilns, and from 

 wagons piled with towering loads of hops already 

 on their way to the metropolis. To those who 

 meet for the first time the almost innumerable 

 wagon-loads of hops at this season, thronging the 

 roads from Sussex and Kent to London, and piled 

 up in their huge pockets to an enormous height, it 

 is a scene which excites astonishment ; and does 



