CULTURE AND PRODUCTION IN ENGLAND. 



79 



Hop Pickers. To give some idea of the number of people 

 employed in picking hops, the following is an official return, 

 kindly furnished me by the Secretary of the South-Eastern 

 Railway, for the last twelve years, of the number of hop 

 pickers conveyed both up and down by special trains from 

 and to London; no account being taken of those who tra- 

 velled by ordinary trains : 



A writer in c Land and Water ' thus speaks of hop 

 picking : 



" There is something wonderfully soothing in the aroma 

 of the hop. The pickers sleep well in the little huts or 

 tents they have run up; and the babies we have seen 

 swinging in their hammocks between the tall bines under 

 an open network of strobiles are invariably in the arms 

 of Morpheus. The hop is classed as a narcotic, and there 

 are many kinds grown the ' red bine,' ' green bine,' and 

 * white bine/ The first produces small cones, but is said 

 to resist the attack of insects best of any ; the green bine 

 will stand poor ground, and the white bine is the most 

 difficult to grow. It is also the one that realizes the 



