PESTS OF THE HOP CROP. 157 



the vines are promptly trained up again, a surprising 

 amount of the crop may be saved. There is a tempta- 

 tion to abandon a yard that is badly down, especially 

 if the disaster occurs quite late in the season, but unless 

 prices are very low, such a condition will often amply 

 repay an effort to set it right. 



Wind has a baneful effect upon hop plants when 

 the burr is forming, and afterwards in all stages of the 

 growth of the cones. It hinders their full development, 

 and when they are getting ripe the heavy gales which 

 often come towards the end of August make them 

 brown by bruising them. In England, says White- 

 head, many kinds of screens, or "lews," are adopted to 

 lessen the force of the wind; some natural, as quick 

 hedges, in parts of Kent, which grow as high as 20 to 

 25 feet in some districts, and rows of Lombardy and 

 other kinds of poplar. Others are made of high poles 

 set closely together, or of hop plants put as near to each 

 other as possible, and trained up poles pitched close 

 together around the outsides of the hop yard. Light 

 cloth of a coarse mesh, made of cocoanut fiber, is 

 stretched about twelve feet wide at about eight feet 

 from the ground upon wires fixed to permanent poles, 

 in those parts of the hop ground exposed to the pre- 

 vailing wind. Screening in this way is expensive, but 

 it is now adopted by most of the large Kentish 

 planters. 



Scorching is caused by the rays of a burning hot 

 sun striking the plant when the air is perfectly calm or 

 when there is not sufficient moisture in the ground to 

 counterbalance evaporation through the leaves. The 

 effects of scorching may be overcome by watering the 

 plants morning and evening. The disease usually 

 occurs when the hop is ripening. If after three or four 

 days' watering it does not disappear, it is better to pick 

 the cones at once rather than run the risk of losing 

 the entire crop. It may be that scorching of hops in 



