354 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. tCh.XXX. 



brown colour, which necessitates the drier to use brimstone to recover the 

 delicate yellow which is so much admired in the sample. In training the 

 bine, women m\g;ht be employed in tying the plant to the frame, as fiist as it 

 grows, with matting, or old bine, until the hops come into bloom, when 

 they should be left to themselves. The upright })oles may be apart from 

 the frame, in the usual way, and might be fixed a little out of the exact line 

 of the frame, so as to distinguish them at the proper season. The plan will 

 have the effect of preserving the colour, as the wind cannot have so great 

 a power over the poles, to the injury of the bine and hops. 



THE CASUALTIES AND DISEASES 



to which the plant is subject are, no doubt, in most instances attributable 

 to an unsettled state of the atmosphere ; and it is a commonly received 

 opinion, that seasons which are rather favourable to other plants are 

 injurious to the hop. The attacks to which it is most exposed are, 

 however, chiefly of some of those numerous tribes of insects known as 

 plant- lice, which are generated by means of which we have only an imper- 

 fect idea, and are brought forth in such vast swarms as frequently to cover 

 the plant, the leaves of which they suck, and cause them to curl downwards, 

 with an appearance of blight, looking black and sickly. If they continue for 

 any great length of time, the hopes of the grower are, indeed, not uncommonly 

 ruined by their depredations above ground, while the wire-worm acts with 

 such eftect upon the roots below, that one-third of them have been some- 

 times destroyed by it. Efforts are constantly made to check thg progress 

 of the injury, by burning heaps of damp straw, fern, and other rubbish, 

 during a day or two, on the windward side of the grounds, together with 

 sulphur and damaged tobacco, in order to fumigate the plants: a practice 

 from which no harm can arise ; for if it does not succeed in driving away 

 the fly, the ashes, when spread, will tend to destroy the larvce of the insects 

 which are in the ground. No effectual remedy has, however, been 

 hitherto discovered, and various erroneous accounts have been published 

 on the propagation and ravages of the different species*. 



The mouldy-fen and the mildew act in different ways as a blight upon 

 the plants ; the fen being more fatal to those grounds which are low, moist, 

 and sheltered, than to those which are high and open. The honey-clew, 

 though generally regarded as a disease of the hop, has been ascertained to 

 be nothing else than the excrement ejected by the hop-louse ; and Jireblasts, 

 which usually occur in the month of July, sometimes scorch up whole planta- 

 tions, from one end of the ground to the other, when a hot gleam of sunshine 

 has come immediately after a shower of rain ; while at others it only affects 

 them partially, or in a particular portion of the plant. Experiments are 

 indeed much wanted on the diseases of plants in general, for the subject is 

 now wrapped in mystery, and can only be elucidated by close and accurate 

 observation. 



* Thus, the insects called "lady-birds" have been accused of committing ravages 

 upon the hop, though in fact they feed upon the fly with which it is covered. Many 

 hop-growers also plant beans in the intervals between the rows, under the conviction that 

 they attract the hop-fly, though the insects found on the two plants are not of the same 

 species ; the bean-plant louse being black, and the hop-plant louse green. — See Reunie 

 on " British Plant- Lice," in which there is a very detailed account of the hop-flj'. 

 Quart. Jour, of Agric, No. xxx. 



