FELLITORY HOP. 253 



Spinach it forms an agreeable and wholesome dinner dish. 

 Any botanist rambling in the lanes in spring with a basket and 

 gardening gloves may win the favour of his or her hostess by 

 bringing back young Nettles for the pot. Sir Walter Scott 

 makes Andrew Fairservice boast that at Dreepdaily, where he 

 was brought up, they grew " Nettles for Spring Kail." 



There are foreign Nettles as large as trees, some of which 

 are without stings, while others are so virulent that their 

 slightest touch occasions intense agony. The fibre of the 

 Nettle is both fine and strong. Thread and lace are made of 

 it in Java and Assam, and I have seen bunches of it in the 

 museum at Kew which resemble glossy spun silk. Grass 

 linen is formed from Nettle fibre. 



Our one native species of Pellitory, the Wall Pellitory 

 (Parietaria offieinalis), grows on the ruins of Richmond Castle. 

 It has a red stem and lance-shaped leaves, with pinkish flowers 

 in their axils. It has generally a dusty appearance, for its 

 hairs attract any loose grime that may be floating in the air. 



The Hop (Hiimulus lupulus, Plate XIV., fig. 13), is Edward's 

 favourite plant. He is enthusiastically enamoured of the Hop 

 gardens of Kent; he says the bine-like plants, climbing ten 

 feet high to the top of their long poles, and then hanging in 

 tendril-like stems downwards, or stretching to meet the ex- 

 tended arms of the next Hop plant, or line, as they are called, 

 form a picture of beauty impossible to excel in the vegetable 

 kingdom. Add to this grace of foliage the not unfrequent 

 accompaniment of an Irish group, a coarse basket containing 

 the baby slung between two of the poles in a very bower of 

 Hops, the father and mother diligently picking the fragrant 

 cones from bines laid across a large measure, and three or four 

 bare-legged children assisting in their work, with more or less 

 assiduity, as their wild nature inclines them, and you have 

 a picture which a painter might build his fame upon. The 

 Hop plants are cut down in the autumn, and left bare all 

 winter. In the spring and summer the shoots are carefully 



