Ch. XXX.] HOPS— PROPAGATION BY SEED. 351 



Picking, Is. per day, or IJf/. por bushel. 



Oasiage, 11. per week, (they work or attend night and day.) 



Bagging, bd. per hundredweight. 



The hop-pickers have a sleeping place found them, their breakfasts 

 daili/i and one dinner a-\veek, with a very moderate supply of cider or 

 beer ; a generous cultivator, however, sometimes allows the pickers two 

 dinners a-week. 



The hop-growers find woollen rags the strongest, most durable, and 

 most suitable manure. On plantations convenient to the sea, sprats and 

 star-fish are also frequently used. 



From these estimates it will be collected that the expenses upon hop- 

 grounds amount to such heavy sums that, even in appropriate soils, it is 

 not every man who can command sufficient capital for their establish- 

 ment. Added to which, the enormous consumption of dung without any 

 return to the land is a serious drawback on the efficient management of a 

 farm ; and, although the culture of hops may in a course of years prove 

 lucrative, yet the great uncertainty of its returns renders it so speculative as 

 to partake more of the nature of gambling than of the regular occupations 

 of husbandry. Tiiis, however, seems to be the great inducement for its 

 continuance ; for although heavy losses are frequently sustained, yet as 

 brilliant prizes are also sometimes gained, there are always people to take 

 the chances of such a lottery. The excise duty on the growth being l8s. Sd. 

 per cwt., the following account of its annual amount during the last dozen 

 years, together with the prices of East Kents from Lady-day to Midsum- 

 mer, and from Michaelmas to Christmas in each year, will clearly show the 

 precariousness of the crops and prices. 



Ladj'-Day to Midsum. Mich, to Christinas. 



PROPAGATION BY SEED. 



The culture of the hop being subjected in most cases to a fixed routine 

 of management, which deprives it of the means of improvement, though 

 liop-growers complain that their plants die off, run out, become small, and 

 of a bad colour ; and it has been not unjustly remarked by an experienced 

 agriculturist, "that it appears advisable, in raising fresh varieties, to I'evert 

 to the seed, either of the wild or the cultivated kind*, a hint which has 

 been lately adopted with apparent success bv Mr. Lance of Lewisham, 

 who also strongly advocates the propriety of retaining the " buck," or 

 " cock-hop," as the male plant is usually termed, and which is, according 

 to the common practice, rooted out of most plantations ; from whose 



* Marshall's Southern Counties, vol. i. p. 184, 



