320 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



hop cannot withstand the attacks of blight, which less 

 valuable varieties would tolerate without fatal injury. 



Another complicated and difficult problem for the 

 hop-grower is the " curing " of the hops when gathered. 

 He has to arrange to grow a number of varieties which 

 will not be all ready for picking at the same moment, so 

 that the hop-pickers may be employed for some six weeks, 

 and gather each kind at the exact time of ripeness. Then 

 the gathered hops have to be "dried" and "cured." In 

 Germany (where the highest-priced hops are produced) 

 small cultivators dry them in the sun, and they are 

 " cured " by the purchaser, but in England they are dried 

 in kilns (called " oasts " in Kent) near the hop-grounds. 

 They are cured with sulphur fumes on the spot as soon as 

 dried. The object of the drying and curing is quickly to 

 get rid of the water, which forms 75 per cent, of the 

 weight of the green flower-heads, but is reduced by dry- 

 ing to 10 per cent., and to destroy the "mould" (fungus) 

 which may be present, and to keep the hops free from 

 new access of mould by the slight deposit of sulphur 

 fumes on their surface. The drying and fumigating 

 require a great deal of skill, and a fine crop may be 

 injured or even rendered worthless by want of care, 

 rapidity, and judgment in treating the freshly gathered 

 flower-cones. It is said that it takes years to acquire 

 the art, and that skilled hop-curers are more difficult to 

 obtain than formerly. 



The natural difficulties and fluctuations with which the 

 English hop-grower has to contend are made far more 

 serious by the fact that he does not know what will be the 

 yield of the American and German hop-plantations, and so 

 cannot prepare beforehand for the demands of the market. 

 It appears that ice-storage is now being made use of in 

 some districts to hold over any excess of produce of par- 

 ticular kinds of hop beyond the special demand for those 



