928 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



short of this medium, it induces a surmise, that the hops are either in themselves of an inferior quahty, 

 or have been injudiciously manufactured in some respect or other. 



6046. Fa/lance's apparatus for packing and preserving hops, is an hexagonal case of wood, eighteen feet 

 long and two feet in diameter, with a piston or rammer, to be worked by a screw or other means so as to 

 compress the hops more closely than has hitherto been done. When the case is full, a lid is fastened down 

 by iron plates and nails, and any crack or joint that may appear is filled with cement, so as to exclude the 

 air. With this precaution, Mr. Fallance states, hops may be kept perfectly good for half a century. 

 {Newton's Journal, vol. vii. p. 12.) 



6047. The strippmg and stacking of the poles succeed to the operation of picking. It 

 is of some consequence that this business be executed as soon as possible after the crop is 

 removed ; not only because tfie poles are, when set up in stacks, much safer from thieves, 

 but because they are far less damaged by the weather than when dispersed about the 

 ground with the vine on them. The usual price for stripping and stacking is five shillings 

 per acre. At this time, such poles as may be deem ad unfit for further service should be 

 flung by, that the planter may have an early knowledge of the number of new poles 

 which will be wanted ; and thus the business of bringing on the poles may be completed 

 in the winter time, when the horses are hot required about other labour ; and these new 

 poles may be drawn from the wood on the ground, and adjusted to the separate stacks, as 

 the state of the diflTerent parts of the ground may require, and the whole business finished 

 before the poling season : whereas, when this method of flinging out the old poles is 

 neglected at the stacking, the planter, being ignorant of the number of new poles that 

 will be required for the ensuing year, often finds at the poling season that he has not 

 laid in a sufficient stock. 



6048. In performing the operation of stacking the poles are set up in somewhat conical piles, or congeries 

 of from two hundred to five hundred each. The metnod of proceeding is this : Three stout poles of equal 

 length are bound together, a few feet from their tops, and their feet spread out, as those already mentioned 

 for pointing the poles. These serve as a stay to the embryo pile ; the poles being dropped in on each side, 

 between the points of the first three, cautiously keeping an equal weight on every side; for on this even 

 balance the stability of the stack depends. The degree of inclination or slope, and the diameter of the 

 base of the pile, vary with the length and the number of poles set up together. A stack of three or four 

 hundred of the long poles of the environs of Maidstone, occupy a circle of near twenty feet in diameter. 

 It is observable, however, that the feet of the poles do not form one entire ring ; but are collected in bun- 

 dies or distinct divisions, generally from three to six or eight in number ; each fasciculus being bound 

 tightly together, a few feet from the ground, with a large rough rope made of twisted vines, to prevent 

 the wind lirom tearing away the poles. The openings between the divisions give passage to violent blasts, 

 and tend to prevent the piles from being thrown down in a body : a circumstance which does not often 

 take place in screened grounds ; but, on the high exposure of Cox Heath, where great quantities of new 

 poles brought out of the W^eald are piled for sale among the Maidstone planters, it is not uncommon for 

 the piles to be blown down, and to crush in their fall the sheep or other animals that may have taken 

 shelter under them. A caution this to the inexperienced in the business of stacking ; and an apology, if 

 one is wanted, for the minuteness of the detail. 



6049. The operation of stripping is generally performed by women ; being nothing more than tearing ofF 

 the bind or vines. Many people burn it on the ground ; others suffer it to be carried off by their work, 

 men for firing ; and there are some who tie it up into small bundles, which they bring home and form 

 into a stack, to answer the purpose of bavins in heating their ovens or coppers. 



6050. The produce of the hop crop is liable to very considerable variation, according 

 to soil and season, from two or three to so much as twenty hundred-weight ; but from 

 nine to ten, on middling soils, in tolerable seasons, are considered as average crops, and 

 twelve or fourteen as good ones. Bannister asserts that sixty bushels of fresh-gathered 

 hops, if fully ripe, and not injured by the fly or other accident, will, when dried and 

 bagged, produce a hundred-weight. Where the hops are much eaten by the flea, a 

 disaster which often befalls them, the sample is not only reduced in value, but the weiglit 

 diminished ; so that, when this misfortune occurs, the planter experiences a two-fold 

 loss. 



6051. To judge of the quality of hops, as the chief virtue resides in the yellow powder 

 contained in them, which is termed the condition, and is of an unctuous and clammy 

 nature, the more or less clammy the sample appears to be, the value will be increased or 

 diminished in the opinion of the buyer. To tliis may be added the colour, which it is of 

 very material consequence for the planter to preserve as bright as possible, since the pur- 

 chaser will always insist much on this article ; though, perhaps, the brightest-coloured 

 hops are not always the strongest flavoured. 



6052. The duration of the hop plantation on good soil may be from fifteen to thirty 

 years ; but in general they begin to decline about the tenth year. Some advise that the 

 plantation should then be destroyed, and a fresh one made elsewhere ; others consider it 

 the best plan to break up and plant a portion of new ground every two years, letting an 

 equal quantity of the old be destroyed, as in this way a regular succession of good plant- 

 ation will be kept up at a trifling charge. 



6053. The expense of forming nevi hop-plantations is in general very great, being estimated, in many 

 districts, at from not less than "seventy to a hundred pounds the acre. The produce is very uncertain ; 

 often very considerable; but in some seasons nothing, after all the labour of culture, except picking, has 

 been incurred. Where the lands are of proper sort for them, and there are hop-poles on the farm, and 

 the farmer has a sutficient capital, it is probably a sort of husbandry that may be had recourse to with ad- 

 vantage ; but under the contrary circumstances, hops will seldom answer. In growing them in connection 

 with a farm, regard should be had to the extent that can be manured without detriment to the other 

 tillage lands. On the whole, the hop is an expensive and precarious crop, the culture of which should be 

 well considered before it is enteredljpon. 



