HOPS BLOSSOM. 167 



summer quarters. They left us but yesterday, and by 

 this time they are doubtless calmly taking a bird's-eye 

 view of affairs at Alexandria. But, perhaps, of all the 

 events that mark this morning in the rural calendar, the 

 most practically important to man is the blossoming of 

 the hops. Passing the bines on my way down to the 

 river — trout arc rising well in the shade this week — I 

 notice that the young cones have now just opened, and 

 that the little green flowers are now fully expanded in 

 good time for an early harvest. The fly that threatened 

 such evil things a few weeks ago disappeared suddenly 

 with the wet weather ; and now, if all goes well, the hops 

 at least may prove a successful vintage amid all the 

 failures of this disastrous year. With fine weather in 

 future, we may perhaps hope to begin picking by the 

 last days of August. 



No plant grown for economical purposes is more 

 graceful and beautiful in its mode of growth than the 

 hop. It stands alone among the nettle tribe in its 

 twining habit : and, indeed, it has diverged so widely 

 from all the rest of its kin, in pursuance of this abnormal 

 trick, that it now occupies a special genus all to itself; 

 in other words, it has broken so completely with its 

 ancestral type that no intermediate links at present 

 remain to connect it directly with its nearest congeners. 

 Nothing could be more unlike at first sight than a lissom 

 creeper such as the hop, and a stiff erect roadside weed 

 such as the stinging-nettle. Yet both are immediately 

 descended, at no g.'cat distance of time, from a single 

 common progenitor ; and both retain in a very marked 

 degree all the most distinctive features of underlying 

 structure which they inherit together from their similar 



