126 HOPS. 



The reflex of this treatment is also manifested in an 

 improvement in the produce, repeated experiments having 

 shown that where cutting has been discontinued a retro- 

 gression in quaHty occurs.^ Endeavour is made to secure 

 this highly important concentration of food supply in the 

 hop plant not only by cutting the stocks, but also by sub- 

 sequently removing all later main shoots and laterals by 

 pruning and topping. All these precautions have the same 

 object in view, namely to direct the supply of nutrient materifil 

 into definite productive portions of the plants, in order to 

 increase their fruitfulness to the utmost. Cutting is the first 

 step leading to this goal, and is based on true economy of 

 nutrition. 



Apart from this main object, cutting also fulfils the im- 

 portant purpose of enabling the growth of the plant to be 

 deferred at will (according to the time selected for the 

 operation) to the season recognised, by local experience, as 

 the most favourable to development and as affording the 

 greatest certainty of obtaining a crop. The following 

 points also may be regarded, not as objects, but rather as 

 useful results of cutting :— 



1. Maintenance of the rootstock in the most approved 

 shape, and at the most suitable depth for ensuring efficient 

 protection. 



2. Eemoval and suppression of injurious runners. 



3. Lightened tillage labour. 



4. Eecovery of sets. 



6. Eational procedure in manuring. 

 6. Greater facility in destroying pests. 



' See Hopfencultur wnd DUngungsverstoche, by Dr. C. Kraus (Munich, 1889), 

 p. 12. Strebel also, in his work on hops, says : "If a wild hop stock is out 

 in a proper manner during several successive years it is found that the form 

 of the cones and their content of lupulin are altered for the better ; conse- 

 quently cutting has an ennobling efieot on the hop plant ". 



